Maple Story: AU One-Shot Collection
by NekomimiToree
Summary: Like the title suggest, a collection of all of my one-shots: poems and stories. A big thank you to Moonlight Blade21 for the awesome cover image. Synopsis for latest one-shot: Sequel to It Was a Wonderful Game that no one asked for. There's also a Fanfic challenge, details on the inside.
1. pas de bourrée suivi

_**Synopsis: **Because Le Cygne is the most touching thing I've ever listened to, here is a crappy poem from me to you. Written on a whim._

* * *

**A/N:** My first (ok that's a lie, but the point is, I do not usually do poetry) and shoddy attempt at poetry. I'm proud of it, nonetheless, but to be completely honest, it's not the greatest thing I've ever written. I honestly don't know why I wrote this in the first place, so late during the night. Read and review at you discretion.

**A/N 2:** Hello again! I have decided to condense all my one-shots into one collection, because I have an obsession with multi-chapter fics. So, to start off this collection of stories, here is an opening poem I wrote a year ago. Will I edit this so that it is clearer? Haha, no. I am so terrible at poetry. Continue to the next chapter for a story if that is more your thing.

* * *

SETTING_—_

The stage contains a table at the side:

On it are three slices of honey bread.

One figure dons a hat with white feathers;

Another stands all the way across on

The other end, behind those loose curtains.

The spotlights shine a clear view of the stage.

A soft glow of heavenly music starts.

Everything starts, never to start again.

* * *

The shining armored knight leans o're the window

Picking apart clumps of fresh baked honey bread.

His hair, that wondrous shade of sunny spot

Shaded by the swimming bird's feathers_—_wait,

What? What could they be; this color so rare?

Pure as the summer breeze, washing over

Skin hot as coals—What is with this weather?

Something sweet, he aught to share, something sweet.

* * *

CHARACTERS—

Our hero sits atop the stage's floor.

His eyes pierces upwards at early stars.

There is heaven, so close he can reach it.

Yet when he tries, there is only longing.

Our heroine sits elevated.

The distance is closer, but still too far.

Her hands are idle at her side and she

Carries nothing but the senses she loves.

* * *

The pond where he is standing holds still when

Two song birds fly over and like a small

Flute, you sing your notes to unmoved worlds:

If I listen with ears from afar I hear

The chorus of two song birds fluttering.

You sing from your heart—oh such cliche thoughts;

I can only hum this tune, my music

Soar past, unable to return, to cry...?

* * *

He carries his wish where his glance directs,

Upon that zenith unable to touch.

Surely, if I could still smell that sweetness

Then may I return, standing by his side

Yet that bridge between him and I is still

Unfathomable. If only my heart...

Reaches out his hand, grasping with longing

Feathers take him away. I do not try.

* * *

PLOT—

The music suddenly rises and falls.

It is now autumn when leaves fall freely.

There is no tree visible on the stage.

Yet, the wind is clearly there, carrying

The senseless breeze of a summer's weather.

Summer vacation had ended for some.

Others continue to work, unable

To get away from their desks, home and work.

* * *

The moon hides itself behind the wake of

Early morning and so bright! Descending!

Leaves of color, so varied, wondrous!

Under this canopy, sealed off from the

Elements, I can imagine moments

Going forever. Then I hear, the flight of

Birds. Flap, flap. Fly and then gone to unknown

places far off where gone are my ears, my—

* * *

MUSIC—

For this final scene the sounds disappear.

Our hero comes home from a voyage.

He finds his wife sewing together the

Feathers that were formerly on his hat.

Our heroine stands, shock written on her.

They stand across much like the beginning.

But after everything, they are closer

Than they could ever hope or imagine.

* * *

Color my world, a shade other than

Dying beneath my feet; these annoying

Days, passing by far beyond what I wish,

I want. Spoiled child I am but I—

Am left speechless. Nothing, when passes by

The sill, behind those curtains white and clear.

Only the air which remembers when he

Carries those wings of swans to swan song's stop.

* * *

EPILOGUE—

Nothing because the feathers are not there.

They are quills, the same for writing with ink.

A dead rose thrown on the floor, unsweet.

Our hero finds no worth in his life.

In an expanse, divided by end bars

The summer day like every other day.

If only my heart... If only my cries...

I heard your lovely voice. I slept in tears.

* * *

**A/N:** Bleh, since I'm self conscience and this probably makes almost zero sense, here is a summary. The narrator goes to see a play and is then reminded of a boy in her childhood. She always wanted to be his friend, but she always feel someone as amazing as him will never be her friend. They eventually separated but the narrator still remembers him years later. By the time she finishes watching the play, the narrator tacks on an epilogue that changes the meaning of the ending. I'll leave that to your interpretation. I'm not too sure myself.


	2. It Was a Wonderful Game

**A/N:** My second one-shot, and first short story. Starts off a lot like a multi-chapter fic, then ends rather unexpectedly. Written for readers to ponder over. Grammar might be a bit shabby (apologies for that) because I'm testing if I can write without grammar check. So far, it seems to be ok, but if you guys find anything that sounds strange, feel free to leave a review.

At the end is a note for Maplestory fanfic writers, so definitely check it out.

**A/N 2:** A short story I wrote a year ago. Immensely satisfied. No edits necessary. Enjoy!

* * *

Ten years, Luminous answers adamantly to Grendel, the head of post-war restoration. The magic library was once a place of learning. But now men and women in lab coats walk to and fro from screen to screen, trying to make sense of the ever increasing numbers. "We need tighter security measures! Give me a line to the empress of Ereve!" cries one researcher, pointing at the glowing red bar bordering Edelstein.

"Ten years, huh," Grendel blumbles and then turns his eye to a screen. One thousand seventy-two casualties. It is very strange for him to not know the time; only ten years ago he had the celebration of a lifetime, downing the rare taste of champagne, breaking a self-imposed ban. And then the rest after that night, he spent in numerous hours at this dead-end of the forest, surrounded by ceaseless noise, awaken by others in between bursts of solitude.

Ten years is just far too much dwelling on this single affair.

Grendel clears his throat. "As you know the Black Mage have been defeated once and for all thanks to the efforts of you and your friends. Yet there are still pockets of his influence. I'm afraid to say that the crisis in Edelstein had reached level four."

_Level four?! _Luminous does not know how to react to the solemn news.

"You are the world's best and brightest and I would prefer not to ask this of you, but I want to relocate you to Edelstein so that you may study the influence in my stead," Grendel offers, rather gravely. "You can think it over knowing I will respect your silence."

Luminous exits the library knowing full well that silence is the best option. A level four is only a step from level five. The danger of going into a level four area is one thing, but if he is to go, it cannot be for futility. Overall, he cannot imagine his abilities, great and wonderful that he is, to be of any help. The situation in Edelstein is grave. No matter how good he is, there is no way...

There is no way...

The Light Mage raises his eyes to the path in front of him, seeing a certain thief that no one ever fails to recognize. He seems too preoccupied with a damsel, so Luminous, in a rush of instinct, raises his hand over his face as he walks pass.

"Lumi!" calls Phantom. Luminous quickens his motion. "Lumi! Oh, Lumi!"

"How many times have I told you not to call me 'Lumi'?" scoffs Luminous. "And can you not visit me every couple of days. I have something called a day job now."

Phantom smacks the unsuspecting Mage on the backside of his head. "You don't need a day job. Be more like me and fly around the world every now and then. That's what it means to have a purpose in life."

"Your purpose," cries Luminous, "is to live off your fame like a spoiled beggar." He pushes the thief off the beaten bath.

"Aww, Lumi! Don't be like that. You're the yin to my yang. And I'm bored. Let's play a card game. Tell me what you would discard."

He flashes five cards straight at Luminous's line of sight. "All of them. It's a dead hand."

"You're no fun," Phantom dismisses. "You know what. I bet you are secretly glad I'm here every week. If there was ever a week where I'm not here, I bet you'll go nuts looking for me." _Yeah, right._ "Oh, I just remembered. Evan wants to know about the situation in Edelstein, or more precisely, if you'll go there with him."

Evan. Luminous always bites his tongue when the boy is named. He's nothing but a shadow of the great Freud. How dare he even call himself a Dragon Master? Dragon puppy, all the more fitting. The only quality he has over Freud is that troublesome naivety. "He can go to Edelstein all he wants," Luminous snaps. "He needs to know how to make his own decisions."

Phantom is amused by his words. "Correct-o. Evan has his reasons for going and you have your reasons for not going."

The Light Mage frowns. "What are you getting at?" he scours.

"Just because our greatest enemy is dead, his influence is still very much alive. Are you the type to really sit around and do nothing?"

"What about you?" he shots.

"This is not my fight anymore. I don't have the same kind of smarts you have. I'm just going to spend my day doing whatever I can before this whole influence thing gets out of hand. As for you, you can sleep on it until that happens."

Phantom winks, then swipes a card over Luminous's eyes, and in that one second, the thief is nowhere to be seen. Luminous glowers. It is a pitiful trick, dodging behind some bush or building like he always does. Is it fun to hide behind empty words that purposely pulls on his heart strings?

_The only reason I don't want to go..._

_...is because I don't want to risk not seeing everyone again._

* * *

Being in a hazmat suit gives Luminous the feeling that he has never left Ellinia. It's not the plastic-glass visor, or the stuffy claustrophobic condition. It is the total divide between him and Edelstein. He touches, yet barely feels. He sees, but only through filtered glass. And the sounds. Forget it. The physicians and special workers have to scream just to be able to hear one another. This place, engulfed by level four, feels just like a dark, distant corner that is better off closed away.

"Emergency! Out of the way!" screams a tough, authoritative voice as he and a group bursts into the room. Four workers set the stretcher before Luminous. "We have to help her!" cries the voice, Evan's voice, nodding to his officer.

Luminous views the woman on the stretcher. Her skin is a rug of shadows, dark arteries pulses, protrudes from beneath her muscles. She spasms uncontrollably against the iron restraints bracing her arms. Her mouth is in an open scream, but how agonizing, Luminous cannot hear. A voiceless agony, he supposes. "She's at late stage two. Bring me the crystals," Luminous commands Evan. The boy looks at him dumbfounded. "I said, bring me the crystals!" Evan backs away from the scene and then runs off. "If you're going to throw up, you shouldn't have come! You bring me the crystals!" The woman rolls over the floor, and contorts into a fetal position. She swings to and fro as if opposing muscles in her body are at a tug-of-war, ripping her apart from the inside.

"Everything is going to be alright," says Luminous, holding her down. Several workers stretch her so that she is lying on her back. Raising his hand, he jabs the syringe of crystals into her chest and empties it completely.

The effect is immediate.

Her body stops contorting, and her visage of horror is replaced with a lasting calm. She looks almost peaceful. The arteries retracts. The dark spots fade away. Her lips mouths a few words, thanking him.

Luminous looks for a clock.

"Time of death. Eleven fifty-four. Wash the body. At least a thousand cycles."

They carry her away, into a forbidden room.

"No, you cannot go in there!" screams a voice from outside. _What now?_ Luminous walks out of the double doors into the discharge room and dumps his suit in the cyclic bin. These will have to be washed again. What a hassle.

"What seems to be the matter?" cries Luminous when he walks into the open. Evan holds back a young man no more than sixteen and a much older man, perhaps young man's dad.

"My wife. How is she doing?"

"I want to see my mom!"

Luminous glares at the duo and then turns to Evan. "Why was a stage two brought in?"

"They hid her from us. Uh, sir, please stay back from this line."

The man tries to rush Evan. "Please, I just want to see her! What happened to her?"

Tch. "Guards!" cries Luminous. "These two have been exposed to the influence. Quarantine them and perform a thorough check."

"What? What are you doing? Get your hands off of me! I just want to see her, dead or alive! At least let us bury her!"

"Absolutely not," Luminous declares. "The influence is strong. She is to be washed. Escort them immediately!"

The guards pull them apart, father and son, despite their struggles and send them to opposite wards.

"Why?" Evan cries. "Why did you do that to them? All they wanted was to see their family again! They hid her because they were afraid you'd crystal her!"

"They are afraid because they are ignorant. This is not just anyone's influence!" yells Luminous, suddenly raising his voice. "We live in a generation where people think it's a post-war golden age. Do you know the consequences of hiding her? What if your mistake leads to an even worse outbreak? If you had caught her sooner, we might not have to redirect our efforts, Evan."

"So," he screams. "It took me a long time to convince them that what we're doing is helping her! And then you just...you killed her! That's what you did!"

_Oh, what a child._ "Would you say those same words if the influence were in Ellinia? Or Henesys? Or even your ranch? This is level four, Evan. Think about what happens at level five."

Evan opens his mouth, but no words come out. It is as if a great voice of compassion is silenced. The still young man stomps into the research lab. He thinks he'll find a cure, and despite the misgivings, Luminous hopes for the best.

A worker then walks up to Luminous. "The new intern is here, sir," he says.

"Good. Tell her to join me at the stage two collective unit. It's about time."

"Yes sir."

Luminous gears up again in a newly washed suit before entering the room.

It is a sight to be behold to be believed.

Lining from wall to wall, bed to bed, are nearly fifty influenced citizens, all with dark spots littering their skin. They convulse as a random mass like the stuttering machines of a steel factory, the rattle of interlocked chains. A volley, a chorus of shouts and screeches; the air thick with a dark, almost imaginary miasma; entrapped in the windowless chamber lighted by fluorescent tubes. Most of them are so far into stage two that even the white of their eyes are black, even their veins bulge out, leaving only a plump hideous mass of a person.

_I truly wish for the best from you, Evan. At least succeed before this gets too out of hand._

"How many?" Luminous screams from inside the suit.

"Thirty- four!"

"Crystal! Wash! A thousand cycles! All of them! Then move in the batch from the stage one unit!"

Someone drops a clipboard.

She has short, innocent hair and she could barely listen to the words he had just said.

* * *

"Welcome to the lab," Luminous says. When he sits on his side of the table, Evan scoots over his supplies so that there is a relative distance between them. "And this is Evan."

"Another Hero!" cries the new intern. "Oh my god, it's so exciting to meet you! I'm Garnet, um, just like my irises. It's so unoriginal. It's silly. My parents named all of my siblings after their eye or hair color. It's so weird. Um..." She shrinks her head back. "Please don't think I'm weird!"

"He's too preoccupied to think. Ignore each other. As a matter of fact, this desk is now yours," he tells the assistant. "And this," he points to a waterless fish tank. Specimens of deep, dark slugs crawls about, seeking a way out of the lighted, impenetrable glass. The stiffness of it is just far too much for these dark beings to bend. "These are the influences. Don't feed them, don't touch them."

One the the blobs falls off the from tank's ceiling and its lips contorts in a frown. "Eh. So that's how they look like?" asks the assistant. "Cool! What happens if I touch them?" She taps the tank, at one of the slugs, and this eyeless being opens its mouth and smacks the rows of incisors against the glass.

"We quarantine you." _At least she's enthusiastic about the job,_ Luminous sighs.

"You know," Garnet remarks. "Weren't you the first influence case? And you were completely cured, right? How did you do that?"

"My methods are not methods at all. I was simply able to apply equilibrium," Luminous lectures, still a bit sensitive over the events of his past. "I was a being of light in the first place, so controlling the darkness is possible. This is simply not true for most everyone. Also I never cured anything. It simply went away after a while. The darkness just gave up."

"Gave up? That's a pretty human thing to say," she remarks again, wonder written all over her face. "But these don't look or feel human at all." She taps a blob with rabbit teeth at the front and as the vibrations echoes across the chamber, they all scramble for her finger.

"They are very much alive," he describes. "We have always relied on the light to vanquish the dark, but recently..." He puts his hand over the tank and explodes a ball of light inside. The slugs immediately shrink into a fetal position, forming segmented spheres half their size. "...they've evolved a defensive form. The amount of washing needed to completely eradicate them is unfeasible for the human body to handle."

"Wait. I should jot this down! Uh, uh!" She picks up the nearest pen and paper. "Can you repeat that just now?"

Luminous simply points at the notes on the table.

...

"What did you call me here for?" asks Luminous, loosening and tossing his scarf at a nearby lab table. Winter has set in after a three month effort. Things have been much the same as before, meaning the level four is still in place. That's actually a blessing, practically Maplemas in Novermber.

Garnet literally jumps off her seat while Evan only stares intently at Luminous. She's too_ enthusiastic at times. _"I think we found it!" Garnet cries. "A cure!"

"You have!" Luminous yells, barely able to handle the good news. "How? Where? Show me!"

"It's not exactly a vaccine, but a surgical procedure. I think it's worth a shot. If we stimulate the influences with simple Light magic, we can turn them into a polyp. These can, then, be surgically removed." Luminous is about to refute this common knowledge when Garnet gives him a smile and a wink. "I know what you are thinking but!~ Watch." She flirtatiously raises one finger and taps it against the tank. At first only the nearest slug bare its fangs for her savory finger, but the others follow. They snarl for that one spot where the echoes are coming from.

It is almost magical.

They pool over to that one side, that one location.

"You mean we're going to lure them to a single place?" Luminous wrestles the report from Garnet's hands and pools over the charts and details. He would have to examine the full report but this...could actually work. "How many surgeries required?"

"One for stage one, two for stage two. The Light magic side-effects can be counteracted with some red or white potions."

It's perfect... It's the cure he has been waiting for.

Yet.

"Who will supply the lure and the magic?" Luminous asks.

"Well..." Her words catch in her tongue.

Evan answers for her. He says, "An endoscopic microphone can be inserted to provide the noise. But the magic cannot be substituted. It requires hands-on Light Mages."

_Hands-on._ "And that means who, exactly? Are you suggesting we put at risk our own people just to perform this surgery? This is flawed! You dare not think over your analysis and conclusions before presenting this!"

"We did, Luminous! We did," he repeats. "There is someone who can supply the Light magic with zero risk."

"Really? Who?"

"You. You conquered the darkness. If you are the one to do it, the surgery would surely succeed!"

"Funny! You are overestimating me for once, child. I am _the_ Light Mage. The world cannot afford to lose a specimen like me. And I conquered nothing! Relapses, diminished responses. If you are wrong about this, none of us here can carry the consequence."

"You had no relapse for ten years, Luminous. You're just scared. Scared of the Black Mage. You didn't come here to save anyone at all. All you do is crystal this, crystal that! I had it! I can't believe Grendel believed in you!"

"I will have you disbarred from all magic research unless you write me a letter of apology. This is level four, not some child's game."

"I'd sooner quit than apologize to you!"

Garnet jumps in between them, pushing them back with her hands on their chests. "Guys, please don't fight! We didn't come here to fight!" She turns to Evan. "He's right. There are still problems that need to be addressed. We'll think of something else." Then Luminous. "It's my fault for being too excited. I'm so sorry!"

"Don't apologize for what you believe in," Evan declares, then stomps off to the outside. He needs inspiration. He needs hope.

Luminous follows, returning to the collective wards.

Alone, Garnet slumps in her chair and plays with the slugs. Tap. Tap. They really like the beat, don't they? _The world cannot afford to lose a specimen like me._ Is that really what you think? Tap. Tap.

She closes her eyes and imagines the song of Ellinia. Memories of friendships; lost opportunities; jumping from tree to tree. First love. First break-up. Sigh. Back to work, I guess.

The first thing she sees, at the part of the table right above the books and journals, is a picture frame. It is placed in such a way so that anyone can see it upon looking up. And it hits the heart like the notes of the song of Ellinia. There are six figures in the photo, smiling at the camera. Oh, and Evan, a cut-off tacked in the corner, right next to Luminous, right above Freud. _The world, I cannot afford to lose the world,_ is what he meant to say.

Right?

* * *

Raise the cycles. Tap louder. We're almost there.

Hang in there!

* * *

Luminous washes his hands with water for the fifth time before entering the intensive care unit. He is visiting the first resident of this particular room, an Edelstein girl no more than fifteen. "How are you doing?" he asks, a pencil at the ready to note any side-effects.

"You're the doctor, right?"

"Researcher. Light Mage." _This girl doesn't know the Heroes? Am I growing that old already?_

"I...I heard your voice when I was sleeping. You were holding my hand, weren't you."

"So how do you feel?"

"Um...a bit flustered really..."

"Flustered? Does your forehead feel warm? Does it hurt anywhere?"

"Well. My heart."

"That's a bad sign."

"Yeah, I..." she shies her head away. "I've never held hands with a boy before."

_The subject seems to be flustered about holding my hand. Gloves might be more feasible in future surgeries. Note: request cardiac exam_. "Anything else?" he asks, almost laughing at himself. He looks at the window, at the shade of clouds covering the big, yellow sun, and for the first time since arriving here, it feels like Edelstein. He can touch them, the citizens. He can hear their voices, mellow and soft. He can see the beauty through filtered air. _Edelstein, _he sees a clocktower in the distance, _is truly a beautiful corner of the world._

"Luminous!" calls a voice, the voice of an annoying intern. He knows what it's about, and there's little time to waste. He follows Garnet into the surgical room.

"I'm here," he says, removing his lab coat to dress up for the next surgery. A team of doctors and nurses follows him and Garnet to the next patient.

Before starting the procedure, Luminous recounts of the number of times he performed this. Fifteen so far, all stage ones. It's still in the pilot period, and the progress of him alone is rather pitiful against the influence's spread. But perhaps not. People, including Evan of all, are starting to believe in them, in him. Belief. It's the same thing that defeated the Black Mage. It will rid of him once and for all.

"Begin the surgery."

The crew looks at Luminous who slowly takes off his protective gloves. He can feel the darkness connecting to him through the air. His hands feels like bricks, impossible to move, impossible to move. But he's already exposed so he stares straight into Garnet's fiery eyes and finds the will to touch the patient's darkened hands. It is a lot like putting one's arm into a crevice of spiders.

But her fiery eyes, as deep as the depths of an ocean, cuts into his chest a longing so passionate, it is inescapable. Time seems to dance about him, swaying in crooked steps, going off from the supposed path.

Tap. Tap.

.

.

.

.

.

.

"I know this sounds a bit late, but I'm wondering if you have any family members," Garnet tests as she pens the latest report. Luminous chops the onions in lattices then readies the tomatoes. A pot of carrots, the lively steam warm in the ice cold research facility, boils above a cooking roast. The world is very still at this moment, almost as timeless as the quiet river cutting through a stillborn flowerbed. This almost feels normal, like something he should never have.

"Family? No, I live alone most of the time. Sometimes I let Phantom rent out the house," Luminous answers. Garnet stops her scribbling. So, he's not married? Well, obviously, Captain Obvious.

She looks at the doodle at the space above her research notes, finding two stick figures holding hands. Oh, no! Scratch, scratch, scratch! "How about your friends? Do you like going out a lot with the special people in your life?"

"No, no. They've moved on to different aspirations at this point and I don't think they want much to do with me still." He laughs. "Other than Phantom."

Oh. Is he the angst type? Oh, duh, of course! He was fighting his dark side for years. But he hasn't moved on yet? No...

She looks at the photo.

He has something important to protect. I wonder if I'll ever be that to someone.

"Hey, Luminous,"

"You can call me Lumi."

She blushes. A nickname! I get to call him a nickname! "So um... Lumi!"

"Ow!"

"Luminous!"

"I'm fine. I'm fine," he calls just when Garnet is getting up. His back is to her but she can still see the line of blood at the side of his finger. He patches it with a used cloth.

Oh phooey. Look what you did, Garnet. Stop distracting him!

She decides to drop the conversation and refocus on her task. Studies and research and experiments. Papers, papers, papers. She enjoys imagining her writings to be in the middle of a breakthrough, groundbreaking work that will finally get her the credentials she covets. Yeah, one day she'll publish a work that will save the world. On it will be the names Garnet, Luminous, and Evan.

She smiles.

The slugs squirms in the background.

"So what did you wanted to tell me?" asks Luminous, balancing the pot roast with both hands.

She spins around.

And screams.

* * *

Stage one quarantine unit.

Luminous has been in this place so many times, he thought he would be used to it. But being here is like being in another, closed-off world where nothing hopeful can grow. He barely recognizes this place, this windowless room, his new home...?

"Oh would you look at that," one of the patients says. "It's the Mage of Death having an off day!" He points at Luminous, and the group around him laughs. "You finally got what's coming to you, eh?"

Finally, Luminous finds the bed with a handwritten name tag. He recognizes the wide arches of the L and the tightness of the U's to be from Garnet's hand. "Here it is, sir," says the guard, laying down Luminous's items.

"Don't call me that anymore," is his only response. He picks the photo out of the pile and fixes it by his bedside.

In this sealed room, he passes his days with little variation. He enjoys lying in the bed, only stretching when he needs to. He cannot talk to anyone because of the words they let him hear. Yet, he pays no attention to them. It is not that they are ignorant. They will move, eventually. One by one into stage two. And new ones come in, citizens that to Luminous is just a single conglomeration.

In and out. Pass and go.

This is the sharp structure of stage one.

Only two people ever visits him.

Evan comes sporadically, and always with a tired look. He stopped shaving after a certain span of time. He sleeps no more than four hours a day now. And whenever he visits, Luminous cannot bring himself to chase away the...the _boy_. He has such a sad look about him all the time, as if he hasn't learned anything about acceptance, fate, destiny. Impossibility. Eventual. Arriving.

Going.

Ending.

_Ending_.

And the other visitor, Garnet, she always bring with her a rainbow of fruits, freshly washed towels, and bittermelon stew. "I heard they're good at cleaning out all the bad stuff in your body. It tastes a bit funny, so I also brought fresh fruits to go with it. Plums and blueberries and kumquats." These daily gifts, Luminous takes without a word. Being sicken on a bed, and under the care of a female guardian. There's sometime pitiful about it, but he loves this little dose of happy energy.

They did not talk much until his second week.

He only says one sentence.

"I don't want to go to stage two."

And when he says that, it wasn't to her at all. His eyes are fixated on the photo of his...

His...

...family.

"Don't worry about a thing. You'll make it home, no problem. Evan always tell me he is working on a cure," chirps Garnet.

And then she runs off, out the reinforced doors and into the changing unit. And there, she dirties the contamination suit with her sadness.

...

_It has been approved. Grendel has to wrestle for it, but you're going home, Lumi._

He can hardly believe it. Home. Ellinia.

"I'm...I'm going home," he says out of the blue, his vision on the darkening clouds drifting by his airship.

Garnet finishes peeling the orange, as difficult as it is while wearing gloves. "You make it sound like it's such a bad thing," says Garnet, putting the juicy fruit into his mouth. "We have so many good researchers in Ellinia. The air is fresh. And the supplies are plenty. We'll make sure the best of the best is taking care of you." Immediately, Luminous imagines a time when the people of the world would refer to him as that. Best of the best. The Light Mage.

"How has your research been going? Are you going to publish it?" Luminous asks.

Garnet shyly averts her eyes. "I don't think I'll publish it anymore." Her eyes betray disappointment, so Luminous reaches for her face only to touch the glass of her helm. She backs away a bit. "I haven't worked on it for a long time and my internship grant has expired."

"They give grants to interns?"

"Yeah. You can't believe how times have changed nowadays..." The sounds drift into space for the rest of the trip.

When the airship lands, they escort him on a mobile bed. The first thing Luminous spots are steel railings holding back a rally of people. They hold up signs and yell something inaudible from his distance. He wants to see what the fuss is about, but the guards and Garnet blocks his view. He can only see the path ahead, straight into the care facility. "They're just excited that the famous Hero is back," explains Garnet.

Just before disappearing from view, Luminous catches a glimpse of one of the signs.

...

"Yawn, yawn, yawn," says Phantom, thumbing through the magazines. "This is the kind of reading material they provide? There's nothing sexy in here at all!" he complains, the echo in his suit making his voice at least ten times more unbearable.

"No one told you to be here," Luminous retorts.

"But everyone said they visited you already, so I have to be here. Besides, I missed you while you were gone. I smell you in your showers, and feel you beneath your bedsheets, but other than that, well, you're never around anymore."

"That's not exactly my fault."

"Yeah, yeah. It sucks being without a home. Anyways, I'm heading back to the apartment. Is there anything you'd like me to bring?"

Luminous thinks it over. "A laptop."

And Phantom purchases the most state of the art laptop known, because he is Phantom, and the requester is his best friend.

"Try not to open a can of worms," warns Phantom, reluctantly giving Luminous the laptop. Right as he is about to exit, he asks, "Oh, are you at stage two yet?"

"No. It's slow, but I'll get there."

"Alright."

Luminous starts the machine immediately but pauses at the search box. Then, taking a deep breath, he types in "Luminous, influence, Edelstein."

* * *

"Who the hell made this dumb decision? They just want us all to die."

"I can't believe they just allowed the INFLUENCE which has ZERO CURE to come back HERE! This is OUR island! We have the right to keep him out! This is STUPID!"

"Stupidity and selfishness trumps over common sense. To the researcher: you chose to go to some corner of the world to fight the influence. Now you expect us to save you? You're no different than those arrogant cowards from El Nath."

"Blow up that airship. No really. They are sending back something that is clearly a danger to our people. We wouldn't let the Black Wings go anywhere near Victoria Island, so why now? I say make that senile fool, Grendel, retire."

"Do you seriously think you are a hero? You are endangering hundreds of thousands of lives! He knew the risks involved but he went there anyway. It's his fault for putting his nose in that no-good place. Just bring two pirates there and shoot him down. Leave his body to rot in a shallow grave. No one will feel sorry for that selfish bastard."

"There is a cure. One arrow through his brain."

"My heart goes out to the Hero who was infected, but really? This thing have been going on for so long and has brought grief to so many people. I'm reading all these comments and they all agree this is irresponsible. Please stop pretending that this influence can be contained. Stop this madness and send him back."

"I used to respect what he did for us but not any more. If he really was such a great person, he would have refused to come back even if they forced him. This is unacceptable. All it takes is one person not doing their job correctly for the influence to spread. We don't even know much about it! This is the Black Mage, the man who almost ended the world. The worse thing is that if he wasn't some Hero, they wouldn't have given him special treatment. Anyone else would be left to die."

* * *

Even at Ellinia he cannot be anyone else but a bed-stricken patient. The air conditioner is kept working at all times to keep feverish patients from getting too warm. When his old friends visits, it is through the wide, glassy window that separates his room from the neighboring room. They always tear at the sight of him, of his sunken cheeks despite the daily meals. And he cannot bear the sight of their bodies pressing against the glass, so he limits the eye contact. When they try to talk, he only responds with weak, undecipherable gestures.

It feels a lot like being in a morgue.

The only one who ever touches him is his former intern. It is always the same, day after day: bittermelon soup, baskets of fruits, and towels. Beside the more personal rooming arrangements, nothing has changed at all. They are still having one-sided conversations with one another. She still brings to his lips the precious drops of bitterness, and spill a sliver down his chin every other spoonful. She still brushes away the wetness with her rubber gloves, and try her best to peel fruits that needs peeling.

It is very easy to wish for everyday to be the same day.

But the influence is not so kind. Even a Hero who had destroyed the Black Mage and saved the world from its tipping point must succumb to his remnants. Just yesterday, Garnet placed the syringe of crystal behind the glass seal above the bed. Once late stage two sets in, anyone can inject the syringe within five seconds.

"Sorry, I spilled it again," she says. "Is it too bitter? Should I add some cane sugar?"

He mouths a few words, the first words in ages. But Garnet cannot hear through her suit, so she leans closer.

Then, he lobs the bowl of soup at her helm and pushes her into the floor. "Get out!" he screams, his voice like a frail child's. "GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!"

"What's wrong, Lumi."

"Don't call me Lumi! Only one person has the right to call me that! Go away!"

She does not know what to do but to watch him continuously yell at her.

...

When Garnet visits Luminous again the next day, she sees a rallying mob at the hospital's entrance. They carry huge signs with burning letters calling for Luminous's exile. "He is a danger to us all!" screams the leader into a megaphone. She does not know how they can be so persistent, but she will not stand for this. She is about to step up to the mob when Phantom calls out her name. "Garnet!" Surprised, she redirect her attention to the voice's source.

"You know who I am?" she asks, bewildered that a celebrity knows her by name. He steps close to Garnet so that they can talk to one another eye to eye.

"I like to keep tabs on anyone close to Luminous. You know, to stay updated on his relationship status. But that's besides the point. I want us to talk for a bit. Get to know one another." He gives her a wink that brings a slight nervousness to Garnet's speech.

"I'm actually running late. I have to get to Lumi, um, Luminous."

"About that. He said he does not want any visitors today. Well, other than me, because I'm special."

She does not know how to respond. She only drops her shoulders as if on the verge of falling into despair. Phantom puts his hand over hers and whisks her to the bench next to a plot of windblown dandelions and petunias.

"He told me what he did yesterday," says Phantom. "And he knows you are mad at him, well." He catches a glimpse of Garnet, then brings out a pack of tissues. "He thinks he knows women."

"Thank you, but I'm fine."

"My pleasure. But, listen Garnet, Luminous regrets what he said, he really does. But he is not an apologetic person. Even during our adventures, he never once apologized for his actions, but we learned not to mind. He knows a million ways to say sorry by not saying sorry. I'm telling you this because, you are very special to Luminous and it would be a shame if you stopped visiting him. Well," he sees the soup, towels and fruits, "he doesn't understand women at all."

"I know that already, Mr. Phantom. But I don't know what I can do to help him," she says, wiping her tears. "Even Evan cannot find a perfect cure, and I'm disbarred from any more research. I want to help him, but not like this, with this soup, and...and these towels!" She raises the items as if about to throw them, then takes it back because Lumi is expecting them. "This can't help him at all! I feel like I'm cheating him! I...I...!"

"It's ok, Garnet. He knows nothing can save him. But he isn't prepared to see everything he loves go away."

And she buries her head into his shoulder.

...

It takes another five days before Garnet can bring up the courage to visit Lumi once more. She doesn't bring the bittermelon, or the fruits, or the towels. She brings herself and a giant "get well soon" card signed by everyone in Luminous's life. It is large enough to hang on the wall so that Luminous only needs to look to his left to see the bright, large word. Luminous.

"Hey, Luminous," she greets, then glances away. "We all made a poster for you! Do you like it?" He examines the two-by-four, looking at the small anime-esque doodles centering his name. She did not leave out a single one of them; everyone he loves are represented on the poster.

And the only thing he manages to say is a simple, "I'm sorry for the other day," in a heavy, rasping voice. "I'm sorry that this is the only thing I could do for you."

"There's no need to say anything," she articulates. "You are the Hero that saved the world more than once. If anything, the world should say sorry to you."

He is slow in his response. "You mean the rallies right outside the hospital?"

"It's only a small, uneducated group," she dismisses. "The police will disband them eventually and Grendel will sort everything out. Just, don't worry about it."

Luminous glances at her to ascertain her truthfulness, then asks, "Look at me and tell me how dark my skin is?" She peeks at his arms, at the cuffs which bounds him to the rails. His skin is black as darkness, and the branching veins are just about to burst open. "Do you think it is time for me to admit my sins to the Goddess?"

"You don't have to admit..."

"I only brought grief to everything I've ever touched."

"What are you saying...?

"Can you peel me an orange? I want to taste something sweet before I go."

Garnet scrunches her eyebrows. "Only if you will stop saying such things. What's the matter with you today?" She picks the plumpest one from the pile.

"I need to tell you my reason for going to Edelstein. Everyone seems to think I was there because I wanted to be a Hero." He sinks his head onto the pillow, as if a quicksand will take him into the bowels of the earth. "The truth is I only went because Evan did. I know I am unable bear the pain of leaving behind someone whom I care for."

"That's wonderful," Garnet says, wondering if her place is as important in his heart.

"I was no Hero, Garnet. When I injected those crystals, I did it to prevent the influence from spreading. I never once cared for them as people." He talks with such headstrong clarity as if those words are an absolute truth. "I had a thought once: if I could crystal everyone with the influence, then I could keep Victoria Island safe. That's why I hunted them. That's wh... AHH!"

"Lumi!" She leans right above him and sees the minute vessels in his eyes burst into droplets of black and red.

His mouth quivers with fear and he screams, "There is nothing for me anymore!" And he raises his head and opens his mouth as if he can somehow grab the syringe above his head.

"No...no! Evan will find a cure!" she yells, louder than she has ever yelled before, hoping that her voice will carry a miracle.

"They were right! All of them! I deserved to die! I should have never came back! Argh!"

"No one deserves to die, Lumi! You're a Hero. You're..." He bites down on her finger with so much force that she has to push against his head to regain control of her hand. "I won't let you die."

It takes a minute for him to stop his struggles and cry tears tainted with grey. "I did this to myself. This is my punishment for being just as selfish as the Black Mage. When I injected those crystals, I only felt relief. Relief. I...I...AHH!" The veins on his face bulges out. "It hurts! IT HURTS TO FEEL THE LIGHT DISAPPEARING! AHH!" He lets out a shrill cry, and tries to control his pain, and in between his short breaths, he begs, begs her to, "KILL ME!" He batters his head against his pillow as the spasms starts. "DO YOU WANT TO WATCH ME IN SO MUCH PAIN?" His arms scrape against his restraints until blood is drawn.

"I can't," she says, unable to look at the monstrous sight any longer. "I won't!" She steps back as the seizures worsens. His chest swells as more vessels bursts into a pool of darkness. "I'll call a doctor," she says, averting her eyes. "Wait right here! I'll get a doctor!"

As she exits, she dares not give him a last glimpse or she too might want to die.

...

When Garnet goes through the double doors, to the outside, the rally is still on-going, oblivious to the last ten minutes. They collectively chant, "Put him down! Put him down!" and raise signs with large, red letters. She tries to ignore their words as she passes the crowd.

"Crystal him before it is too late!" "No more ignorance!" "This man is a murderer!" "He is a selfish bastard!"

"He is not a selfish!" she screams, unable to bear it any longer. She comes face to face with the rally, and silences them with only her presence. "You can call him anything you want, but not selfish! He did all this, all THIS for you! What happened to your compassion for others! He was a Hero who defeated the Black Mage and he is still trying! And all he ever wanted was for the things he loved to be safe! How can you call that selfish! He...HE..."

The shot comes from somewhere in the back. She cannot remember how many are fired. At least two, maybe? Before long, she cannot think any longer, and collapses into the hard earth. Her eyes are a deep dark red, her skin is lined with dots of inky dark. And right before the lights close, she can hear, very faintly, the sounds of cheering.

* * *

"Me and my big mouth! I can't believe I have to do my report on the Influence Outbreak. It's not even history yet, but I have to do a history report! How am I supposed to find out more if the news barely even talks about it?" She walks through the memorial of those who died battling the Black Mage. From above, the great orb in the sky sends glowing rays over these polished, black granite walls. She is too young to recognize the names of the Heroes she passes.

That is why, when she sees a homeless man sitting at the new memorial stone, she curiously walks up to him. "Hey there, kid," says the homeless man. "Are you here to check out the names of those who sacrificed themselves during the Outbreak?"

"Huh? Do you know about it? Can you tell me how it began? Did it really have to do with the Black Mage?"

"I only know what my friend has told me. He was actually one of the researchers during the outbreak. Ah yes, if I were to put it as a card game," starts the man, "it was a high risk round. My friend knew that he must bet it all if he wanted to win. But on that last round, a dead hand was dealt."

"Dead hand?"

"When the cards are so disorganized that you are forced to discard four cards just to save it. Of course, he had an Ace in hand, so most people would go for a pair of Aces and a King at the very least. But this is an all-in round, and a pair is still just a pair. He discarded all five cards for a fresh hand. And what a hand it was. The first two cards were Aces, and the third was a King. Can you guess what the other two cards were?"

"Um..."

"A seven and a five."

The girl leans forward and finds nostalgic tears dripping down his cheek, onto the hot earth. "Why are you...?"

"It was a wonderful game played in the cruelest world."

* * *

**A/N:** That very last scene was a reference to an obscure manga no one reads (that I know of). Kudos if you know where it is from. And now, onto the message.

Ok, FF writers! I have been on this site for a number of years now and it has always been my wish to form a cohesive community of writers, the purpose of which is to share ideas and act as critics for one another. The reason why I am putting this forward is because there are so many writers who get writer's block and eventually leave the site. That's actually a bit upsetting (I'm looking at you x-SystemRestore, Manaxsavior, WildOrion). As a result, I think a community gives writers a comfortable place to discuss their stories so they won't feel nervous when posting something new. This allows writers to improve their overall writing quality and encourage more creativity.

That said, I am prepared to spearhead a Maplestory-exclusive community of writers. If you are interested, PM me. Anyone is welcome; you do not have to consider yourself as an experienced writer to join. If I get at least five writers to respond by the end of the week, I will form the community and invite others to join. Live long and prosper, FF writers!


	3. Metamorphosis

_**Synopsis:** Humans are such weak, egotistical creatures._

* * *

**A/N:** I will probably do this every year, so here's to get this out of my chest. If anyone wants to create a Maplestory community of writers, give me a PM or respond in a review and I can spearhead this operation. I doubt I will get more responses than last time, but if enough people are interested, I will create this community.

Third one-shot. AU. Grammar might not be best, so do correct me. Another A/N at the bottom.

Note: Eunwol is the Korean name for Shade. Lang is the Korean name for Moonbeam. Suu is the Korean name for Lotus. Also Fem!Eunwol, because I like female Eunwol and it makes sense on the context of this story.

Also note: This story gets pretty graphic near the end, so cuddle with your stuffed animals as you read.

* * *

_He's right here. What do we do, Eunwol?_

From the vast nothingness, Phantom picks up the repetitive sound of a playing card stuck to the spokes of a bicycle. He is nearly dead. Or maybe, in some way, he is already is. Something wet trickles over his lips.

_What else? He's under this rubble! Save him! _screams the voice of a woman who is steadfast, effective, and shrewd.

Light.

It has been a really long time since Phantom has seen the light. And right now, it exists as a small dot, a hole in the boulders which collapsed on top of him. Some motion frees the weight on his legs, and then that dot expands right before his eyes, sunlight whose luminosity is so blinding, he could only see the figure of a woman, stretched by shadows. With one dark arm, her hand incredibly soft, the smell of wheat, water, and dirt, she takes him into the light, back, back to country, civilization, people, hope.

Hopelessness.

She calls Phantom's name many times, but it echoes in the cavity of his skull. Eunwol grips him tightly by the shoulder but he looks right past her concern, at the blue, blue sky and the flight of birds whose feathers are sooty and burning. He appears so lost in his own mind. Eunwol fears so gravely that—

He moves.

The first thing he does is wander slowly to the center of the village, the very earth around him sundered into crags, broken beyond belief, repair even. A great battle has happened here, in this village where he was taken and imprisoned for months. Eunwol follows Phantom closely and lo and behold, he spins the handle of the well for water which he pours over his hand, hands which are as chapped and flaking as dry, bleeding lips. The water eats into those cracks in his skin, reopening the red scars. The pain must be truly unbearable.

But despite that, Phantom sinks his whole hands into the water; Eunwol can only look in awe as he lifts up those hands—blood, so much blood, infused with the flow of water, drops one dot after another from his hands back into the bucket.

"What happened?" Eunwol asks, her fears, her everything giving her pause and panic.

Daze. Blank. Silence.

"Have you been washing your hands? Is that why...?"

"Stop!" screams a woman, Aria, who quickly joins Phantom's side. She clutches those chapped hands, feeling the places all over his skin where it is rough and peeling. "I'm sorry," she cries, connecting with that pain which Phantom could no longer express. "We shouldn't have betrayed you."

Somehow, with this, like some miracle, Phantom stops washing his hands.

But yet, he is still truly broken.

The next day, Eunwol could not find Phantom anywhere anymore other than a letter placed at the slit of the window where he had escaped. Aria was the one who set him free and without him, the Heroes could not hope to win their final battle.

* * *

It is a Wednesday in spring when the letter finds its way onto his hand. Touching the arching waves on her capital letters, particularly her L's and her G's, he always receives an abundance of her life. A swiveling of a day granting seeds to the birds. The harsh inkblots of a newly, cheaply bought pen. Nothing, nothing else but the love to her country. That is the part which moves him the most, country, people, love, dedication. It is all so simple and clear, as clear as day even, and he, Phantom, rarely ever could ask for something more precious.

Finished, he folds the letter by its seams, into quarters, and tucks it somewhere where it will forever remain preserved and air-tight, well-hidden, and most important of all, secret and dark. Grasping a stray wrench perched on a stool, Phantom turns from the lighted, breezy upper floor of the Lumiere to the gears and clockwork beneath. It is a motionless place, awaiting repair before it could grow wings, take off and discover a newer, better place than the port at Ossyria. Two glasses, one half-empty and the other empty, and a pitcher of iced lemonade rests atop a horizontal gear. He tilts the half-empty glass between his lips in full view of his new assistant.

"Hey, that's mine!" Marianne huffs to her twenty-seven year-old boss, appearing from behind an iron pillar with a face full of grease and a cup of oil.

"I don't mind your saliva."

"Of course you don't! Rough and dirty! Unlike someone I know, my saliva is feminine and gentle!" She stomps over to the tray and steals the empty glass for herself. "You're not using this one!"

"You're angry at me," Phantom guesses. "When did you get the lemonade? I didn't see you walk past me when I was upstairs."

Marianne glups down a cup of the sour, sweet drink. "You always have this dreamy, girl-in-love look on you when reading those letters. Even if an earthquake happens, you wouldn't even know what is happening," she teases, bumping shoulders with her boss. "Hey, stop standing there like some idiot. Can you help lift me up to that screw."

"Okay." Phantom, then, kneels before this teenage girl, and lets her climb over his shoulders. "Wait. Shouldn't I do it, since I am the engineer here," he blankly states.

"Are you kidding, boss?" Marianne smiles. "If you want to look down on me because I'm a kid, then let me warn you, I can do these basics with my eyes closed. Don't tell me you hired me just because I'm pretty."

"No."

"Yeah, yeah, you old geezer. At this rate, you're going to grow white hair before you marry!"

After the work is finished, and dinner is cooked and served, the pair still have a few hours until the sundown. They pick up the deck of cards lying on the center table and start passing out five cards per player, but Marianne is not too particularly fond of gambling past times. Phantom offers blackjack until Marianne decides for Go Fish.

"Hey, Marianne," he says while handing to her an Ace, finding this tranquil, quaint moment to be the best time for inquiry, "if you were me, what you would write in return?" He is talking about the letter which details are so full and lengthy that he perhaps feels obligated to say more than just spending the week on empty, uneventful repairs and unproductive card games.

"Well, if I were the girl you love, I would want you to tell the truth."

"And if I can't?" Phantom returns seemingly weighted but with a steady, dull voice. Although young, Marianne could pick up a nervous twitch in Phantom's language.

"Depends," she says, looking directly into his eye, sensing nothing but terror. Passing his cards slowly, he acts as though he has something else to say but could not do so without consequence. That night, Phantom could not fall asleep, so he washes a glass and warms up some lemonade, the only drink on the ship. In the morning, Phantom pays a little extra to Marianne to write his response to Aria.

* * *

The sun is setting and she always write her letters with ink made from sycamore bark extract burned through something the Elves call Floric Fire, some green flame produced by some parts fairy dust and some parts unicorn bone powder. It is little more than some hocus pocus delicacy that she consumes because she is some bitter, close-minded—

"Now, now, you should be civil in the presence of your superiors," she says, throwing back the ruffles of a dress that gets in the way of her elbows upon reaching the margins. Her gaze is shallow and piercing yet— "Stop making it sound like you actually fear me." Her voice is matter-of-fact and fraught with belittlement, and her eyes remain distracted with writing. "If we want to obtain the most from one another, you have to be as honest as possible. Now tell me, what is it that you came here for?"

Scowling, Eunwol leans forward, onto the desk, places a hand on the fresh ink on the paper, and speaks with a tone of such audacity, Aria just might off her head. "Listen here, _princess_. You know very well that we are losing this war, so you are not doing me a favor by—." Again, Empress Aria cuts off Eunwol's train of thought, and that is what makes her the most despicable of all rulers.

"You are not getting Phantom," Aria states. Eunwol would do anything to swipe away Aria's playful smirk, her pretension that this is a game and not a negotiation concerning their greatest enemy. "That reminds me. What happened to that foxy friend of yours? Lang, correct?" Aria asks with concern so fake, sarcastic, unreal, plant-like, that Eunwol cannot even bother to answer. "Don't tell me you both had a big fight. Oh, I am so sorry. Tell you what, you can stay next to my room as long as you'd like as long as you treat yourself like a guest." At that last word, the last of the sunlight phase out, leaving them in complete darkness.

Eunwol leans back to her chair, into that dark curtain of the nightly shadow; the spark of a match and touch of lamplight brings out the most shadowy, mischievous look in Aria. She continues writing. "I did not come here expecting you to forgive me for what happened to Phantom," says Eunwol, "but I will not plead either. I protected my friends. Both of them."

"You have no right to refer to Phantom as your friend. Anyone can say that except you. The moment Lang was captured and you told me to exchange Phantom for her, you lost your right to any kind of friendship. You've betrayed him."

"Like you never thought of that."

"I did. I admit. Her powers and yours were incredibly useful and it made sense to exchange a weaker hero for a stronger one. But I never and I never would agree with what you have put him through."

"I did what I did to save the world, _princess_."

"And? Did Lang agree with what you have done?"

Eunwol keeps herself silent. Finally, she moves and pushes down a rack of dresses on her way out.

The third, invisible person in the room, speaks his mind for the first time, having to adjust his unease and volume before doing so. "Perhaps she is right, Aria. Phantom is a valuable asset to us and moreso, Eunwol herself is valuable."

"What value? A disrespectful know-it-all? Even discounting Phantom, there are still four more just like her, out there, waiting to regroup, one of them being a fellow ruler and long time best friend. There is no need to be so afraid, Neinheart."

He looks at his friend and sees not the friend but the empress. She tells him to be unafraid with so much bravado and even a pat to his back, instead of the soft, feminine assurance that he has come to expect from his very best friend. He tells himself that something in him has changed, made him disagree with Aria's method of setting Phantom free instead of rallying him and his inventive mind for the war effort. He is deathly afraid of admitting that something in Aria has changed. "Do you really love him?" Neinheart asks, not out of jealousy but concern. She avoids the question for a while, picking a dress from the fallen rack and asking if it would fit the charity ball tomorrow night.

While he helps her into something line with silk and gold, she reveals, "When you asked me if I really love him, you should know that I would not hesitate for a second to use anyone if it means the safety of all that we work for and love." Then she adds, "Except him."

At last, Neinheart could put his finger, so to speak, on what has changed in Aria. Her love for her country.

* * *

Today he is holding a letter whose H's and K's looks like the arms and legs of people in motion on a ballroom. The grace of the swing, air swishing through his hair, bringing him to the next step, yes Phantom can feel all of it. An incredibly distant part of him wants to connect with her, like the red strings of fate tied from pinkie to pinkie, but as long as he carries his secrets, he could never be with Aria. After reading her letter, he seeks out a good restaurant, the Chateau, known for having a bar that attracts the most desirable of women. Over the reflection on a black-tinted window, he places richly rings per finger, and adjusts his wrist cuffs to display the gold threads and buttons.

And tagging along with his every step is a teenager, Marianne, in her regular working overalls. Upon entering, Phantom notes a brunette lady in a black dress sitting at a lonely corner of the bar. "If you want me to eat alone," Marianne starts, eyeing the same lady with a smidgen of annoyance, "you can always tell me." She is more irritated than usual, the kind where the voice turns in grumblings, yet Phantom ignores all that.

"No, silly. You are such a good help to me. I can't just leave you unsupervised. Table for two, yes, that window seat is nice. Here," he says, giving her the menu, "what ever you want is on me."

"Really? I wouldn't want you to do anything against your will now," Marianne says, still grumbling, but already thumbing to the seafood section for something expensive and off-season, buttered lobster with a side of scallops and mussels linguini, yes. Yes! When she looks up from the menu, his head has turned slightly towards that woman, looking at her with a gaze that means something sleazy and unkempt. "That woman who writes to you, does she know about the way you look at other women?" she asks.

"She's cultured and from a society that I could never reach, that her friend and I had agreed would be best that I not interfere with. She is smart enough to know and accept that this is what men does."

Marianne scoffs. She cannot believe this man. "Love is not about knowing and accepting. It is about understanding by telling the truth and being honest about your feelings. Would she still accept you if she found out that you have been telling me to make up stories for your letters?"

Phantom smiles. "Honesty is not something for everyone. Would you tell your parents you were working for a thief like me? Letting them know would mean losing a stable income and the trust of your parents."

"But lying is bad for a relationship," she bluntly states.

"We're not in a relationship, not anymore," Phantom says, pouring a spicy mushroom sauce over his chicken.

"Then the letters?"

"It is just us wanting to return back to a time before..." Pause to chew on and swallow a piece of breast. "Before I changed. Mmm, this is good. How is your lobster?"

Marianne looks at her boss with a kind of disturbed wonder as she rips out a chunk of meat. He talks, she observes, with an attitude so optimistic that she could imagine how endlessly he conceals certain things. Then, Marianne sees the brunette lady in the black dress, slurping one shot of alcohol after another, a company of cups, some full, some half-drained, around her like an arrangement of empty promises. It dawns to her that even though she is pretty, sexy even, this lady might never find a man who truly love anything about her besides the way she looks in that dress.

Marianne turns back to her boss. He moves his knife around the thigh bone with precision and skillfulness and, even when hitting a hard joint, he easily finds a softer area where the sawing of the meat is easy and clean. Something automatic takes a hold of Phantom, his expression blank every time he brings the meat up to his open mouth. "Boss, is there something you are not telling me?" she inquires, not expecting a substantial answer, only expecting to see if there is indeed something wrong with her boss.

"Honesty is not something for everyone," he replies with a smile so strained, Marianne could almost taste the bitterness.

That lady at the bar, in between bouts of clarity and oblivion, watches Phantom approach her with a cold smirk and whisk her away to a bedroom stocked with clean, white sheets. In the morning, she finds her wrists red from being gripped and her back bruised where elbows were being pressed on her. While restocking the groceries for the Lumiere, Marianne passes by that lady and notes her bleeding, bitten lips, and how much she would look like Aria if she had wore a blonde wig.

* * *

While working on her next message, a bout of shivering from her worries Neinheart. She is ill, very ill with something ghastly that has escaped the doctors.

"She is a very sad person," Aria says, looking up after putting a playful swirl to her capital D's.

"Huh?" escapes from Neinheart's lips.

"Eunwol. You are concerned about the darkness rising in the east, and whether or not Eunwol will do something about it. She is without Lang, sure, but considering how easily she is ruled by emotions, she would come around to our side, regardless. Here you go." She lifts the letter to him, a string of words about pastries and how much she yearns to see him again, therapeutic words that might get Phantom to finally tell her the truth of those missing months. Eyeing the letter, Neinheart would see the simpler and tranquil times, but he is not a dreamer. He would not hope that Aria could drop her empire and live a quaint little life with the man she loves. Yet, if she decides to leave at this moment, he would not object. After all, ruling this country has taken a toll on her and that mystery is entirely devastating.

He takes that letter with the thought that he could shoulder the country if it means Aria could be freed from her shackles.

"Don't be daft with your thinking," Aria warns. "Even if Eunwol is going to leave us, we still have the other four. All we need to do is to locate them."

"Why would we even need them in the first place? The forces of Ereve are vast and powerful, especially our chief Chevaliers," bursts Neinheart in a flurry. "We should start now, end this, get some closure before it is too late."

"What are you saying? It is not too lat—."

"I'm talking about you. You're sick. You should be resting plenty."

Aria could not say a single word of denial for she now fully appreciates Neinheart's worry. "Alright, I will rest, but only after I settle my country." Neinheart sighs uselessly. "I could have a long, meaningful talk with Eunwol. She is not a dumb person and she certainly is more than willing to negotiate. If only there was someone who could arrange a meeting between us. Oh," she spots the outfits next to the door. "What colors do you think she likes? She's always in black."

* * *

The garden outside the gates of Ereve's palace is always in bloom. This month the theme is Valentine's pink, but that means nothing to Eunwol because the richness of these colors, pastel as if awaiting for the arrival of Spring which ended last month, is nothing. If she could, she would slash and burn this garden and have the fertile land made for something that can be of use to people. Thus, she consciously chooses not to sit across from Neinheart but rather trample on the distasteful pink even as he invites her with a deck of cards. "If this is your idea of a date, sorry, I'm not interested in men right now," she clarifies.

"That is no problem. It is Aria who wants to speak with you."

"And she sent her advisor to play with me? Are her servants too busy to humor me or does she like to also pretend that her second-in-command is a perfectly reasonable messenger."

"Can you stop, just stop, that irritating rhetoric of yours?" Neinheart growls. He has become a tiresome and angry little man and Eunwol cannot help but analyze the minute changes in his temperament. "I am the one to pass on this message because she can sense that you would hate surprises. For your comfort, she arranged a game for you to enjoy. Can you at least pretend to step back your dislike for her?"

"Is that what she told you? Let me tell you something. Unlike her, I don't pretend anything, least of all that I know other people's feelings. If I did, I would not have stayed here for so long, and I would not have the patience to negotiate for so long. You tell her, that unless she is telling me where in the world she has hidden Phantom, I am not going to rush into a fight I cannot win."

"Phantom has saved our lives more than once and with personal costs that no man should ever shoulder," Neinheart voices, as if only quoting Aria and not his own thoughts.

"I do not ignore that I made a mistake. But I will not let what happened to me, or Lang, or Phantom get in the way of saving this world. I don't care how much Phantom needs this little vacation, but I am not beyond torturing the information out of her." She spits her words with hate that threatens to paint the world a crimson red and she almost wants to when Aria appears from behind her, drifting over to the seat across from Neinheart. Eunwol has known Aria was approaching but did not care much about what she could hear.

Neinheart starts passing out the cards, but Aria ultimately decides that she is not in the mood. She says, distant and slightly afraid, agitated, "Weren't you going to torture me? I'm right here."

"You think I won't, princess?"

"Then, I ask that you give it up before you even start. There are many capable people in this world, if not one, then two should suffice in replacing him. Or perhaps magical weapons or artifacts, surely those are enough!" Her voice shifts, cracks, sending a chill down Eunwol's spine. She sounds barely human, barely adult. What is happening? Aria adverts her neck, her eyes. Could it be? Eunwol thinks over it with an expression so hard she almost turns to steel.

"Princess, look at me in the eye," Eunwol declares. A shiver, like from a touch from a cold, dead organism, emits from within the shell of Aria's deepest core to the skin beneath her dress. She stretches out a hand for Neinheart to warm before she can summon up the same steel-like resolve and face Eunwol.

Yes, it is very, very invisible, but something is growing behind her eyes which is of a blue so turquoise, it makes up about the only thing spectacular, the only thing any common person could note about Aria. Yet, it is because of that turquoise, so ethereal in its charm, that Eunwol quickly realizes just what those shivers from Aria truly mean. "You do not have to belittle me with whatever fake concern you have within you," Aria states, a breeze blowing hair out from behind her hair and into her eyes.

"How?" Eunwol asks, her voice shrinking as terror grips her.

"It was a gift from a person named Suu whom I met at the charity ball."

Some feeling overtakes Eunwol. Is it anger? Is it the guilt of betraying Phantom? The sadness without Lang by her side?

"I will be leaving now," Eunwol whispers, suppressing something.

Aria could do nothing to stop her, that woman who despises everything about Ereve, the serenity, this garden, an empress who would rather protect the man she loves than the country which means everything to her and her best friend. Today Eunwol probably has a whole new object to direct her hatred, something healthy like revenge rather than the spite of living another dull, meaningless existence. Or maybe, Aria is being too judgmental.

Yet, why should she care anymore?

"I visited a shaman," Aria explains wryly, and Neinheart is too afraid to follow her conversation but he has seen inside her eye and they both understand where this is heading. "I'm going to need you to help me write a couple of letters. At least," Aria looks up with her eyes. "Five hundred."

"What are you talking about?!" Neinheart says, voice rising almost to a full scream, inadvertently but far too late to take back. "What kind of nonsense did that shaman tell you? Don't believe it. Trust me. You will be—."

"The madness sets in within a week, Neinheart. I need you." She holds his hand with both of hers, squeezing so intimately that they can experience each others hurt. "I don't have time. I have to settle Phantom, make sure he is never in pain again."

"You're in pain right now! We need to heal you!"

"It's too late for me!"

"Then we'll make a deal with this Suu! We'll sell out someone! I don't care who. Aran, Freud, even Mercedes! Just tell me that you will still be here. Tell me that after all this is over, at least one of us can have a happy ending!"

"At least one of us can. But that person cannot be me any longer. Please, the letters. I love him, Neinheart. I don't want to go knowing that he will be suffering for the rest of his pitiful life. You know how much I don't like puppies. I am the Empress! I must rule this land! I am king! I— I—." She shrieks something painful, and not at all human, and she bends her arms to the back of her neck at an angle that normal human joints should not be capable of. Clutching her, holding her onto the floor of the garden, their bodies squashes the valentine flowers and Neinheart tries to coo music into her ears, but slowly and surely the madness is setting in as the ocean eating away at a young, brilliant sandcastle, the end, nothing.

"This is all that I can still do for him," Aria begs right before she loses consciousness.

...

While packing her belongings, Eunwol sheds tears that seeps into the fabric of her cloak. As she passes by Aria's chambers, she peeks in, seeing the empress and her advisor working side-by-side on the five-hundred letters. "Why do we love only to be hurt?" Eunwol manage asks.

And by Neinheart's understanding, this too is rhetoric. "You have no right to talk about love the moment you told us to trade Phantom."

"He was the weakest. It made sense should we fail to rescue him," she replies before pondering whether rescuing Phantom was really the correct action.

* * *

Marianne slowly comes to realize that her boss is a very polarizing man. When they have dinner together, always at a place with a bar, he always walks as if floating in the wind, able to pretend that nothing is wrong. During these dinners, he always claims a willing and able woman for the price of a night at a hotel, occasionally the closest one, and if not the cheapest. He never brings them to the Lumiere, thank heavens, because Marianne would not want those kinds of stains in her room. Sometimes he flirts with them for extended periods before touching even a dip of his dinner, and Marianne has to wonder if he could sustain himself on sex alone.

Then there is the other side to Phantom, the one she is seeing now, reading a letter with such dullness and blankness. Can he even tell that her S's are weaker than usual? Marianne has read the letter already, an anecdote about a failed night of poker with two friends, typical, plain, homely, which makes her sick for the embrace of her parents. This is the side of Phantom which confuses her the most. What kind of heart does he hold if he is not moved by such a sweet slice of Aria's life? Is there more to gleam from the letter than just words or is her boss just incapable of care?

At last, he tucks the letter in an airless space, that dark and concealed furnace at the back wall of the Lumiere. Turning a dial, the fire crumbles the letter into white, smoking ash, vapors of carbon that fuels the heater of the ship. Although the month is July, at this corner of the world, the wind blows air so cold that the door outside has been frozen shut for the time being and near future. "I need your help," Phantom says, bringing over a stack of vintage stationary whose color is printed to appear faded and ashy with the trial of time.

"What do you want to write this time?" Marianne sighs.

Phantom looks to the window for inspiration and ponders the snow hitting the glass. "Something happy," he says with a tone that is anything but. "Something that could remind her of Maplemas. The reds and greens. And seeing the reflection in those round spheres we put on small fir trees." Marianne could barely hear his soft, depressed voice as if the cold has frozen the words he wants to say.

"Hey," Marianne says with a cheery smile. "Why are you so gloomy? Don't tell me you miss going out to restaurants everyday."

This brings a smile to Phantom's lips. "I don't know," he candidly says and stops the smile."I am— There is—." He growls angrily. "Can you not talk about that in front of me? I do not want to hear a word, from now on, about the restaurants!" Marianne shrinks away, partly in fear and partly in shock. See her move away, Phantom catches himself and quickly apologizes. "I'm sorry. I just— I—." He is about to say his darkest secret, but changes his mind during this split second pause. "I am just reminded of my mentor," he says loftily. "We couldn't celebrate Maplemas like regular people. When Maplemas comes, we got each other things from the bargain bins. Bars of chocolate wrapped with yesterday's news. A jar of oil for the airship. I used to receive a gift every year until he passed away." The back of the pen in Marianne's hand slowly migrates to her lips. "I'm sorry."

"No, go on," Marianne says, throwing her bangs behind her ears with the pen. "If you're not in a good mood, I can't force you to be happier. But I have all the time in the world to hear you talk if that makes you feel better."

Phantom scrolls his wandering eyes at anything but Marianne's angelic features which reminds him so much of Aria's, the object of his letters, the subject of his unyielding love. "I don't even know where to begin. I'm a bit thirsty, actually. Would you like some hot chocolate."

"No thank you. I drink that every year when it snows. But if you have warm lemon tea, that would be perf."

"Perf?"

"Perfect. You old people can't understand the way we young people speak these days."

While waiting for Phantom to return from the kitchen, Marianne finds a door that she never remembered was on the Lumiere. It is a regular door, like any other, with a round, dome-like top, giving the impression that the gentle bear who co-exists with Goldilocks must be hiding within. She reaches for the doorknob. Behind it is a mess closet with a mop and a random saxophone lying in the corner with brass that managed to escape the rust of time. Like all teenagers these days, Marianne has taken music lessons, but not on some "street" instrument like a sax. No, she learned the clarinet, but with a good ear for notes, Marianne found the C-chord on her third whiff of the mouthpiece. The sax is off, slightly, a half of a half-step if that even makes sense, but the intervals which underlie the instrument remains unchanged.

She plays a song that reminds Phantom of a Maplemas Eve when he and his mentor was at a rooftop, waiting for the music to end, the guests to leave, and the master to sleep.

In the end, he did not tell her the terrors at the bottom of his heart. He did not tell her about the events of those few months inside the enemy's prisons. He did not tell her about Eunwol selling him out to rescue Lang. All those times of despair and betrayal feels like a period in his life, a minuscule speck that matters as much as the letters L's and G's, H's and K's, S's which has been turned into ash. The only memory worth keeping are those of a many Maplemas's years and years ago. Phantom strays his fingers on the windowpane and feels that contrast of the wet, solid cold with a hand blazing from handling a mug of heated tea. How is the wind outside? Sixty kilometers per hour of a dull, repeated beat like a card stuck to the spokes of a wheel.

The soothing lemon tea puts Marianne into a yawning mood. "I think I'll take a long nap," she says, barely making it to the door as she stumbles into the adjacent wall. "I'm fine. There! Good night!"

Thud. And she's asleep.

Phantom stands over her door with a twisted desire beating in his wanting chest. He recalls those old manuals on love and how commitment in a relationship lasts, on average, ten years. After this close, emotional commitment deteriorates, there remains only the physical, often the only connection that keeps the couple together for the rest of their lives. Phantom imagines how the woman must feel, how low-grade she must feel to strip for a husband who only wants to enter and not love her. Or a woman who is frustrated and can only find seduction as her sole way of release. Or a woman who just wants to be punished in the most animal way. He recalls all those visits to the restaurants with Marianne...

Phantom is spooked.

Understandable. He hasn't had a woman for a very, very long time. He looks at the cup of lemon tea, now cold, but the cup still half-full.

Scared, he backs away from the door swiftly. He turns to the furnace, looks for something loving at the ashes of Aria's love—any form of Aria's love—and finds hopelessness instead.

Finally, he brings up the courage to twist the dial to vaporize and completely burn away the rest of the white ash. And he crawls into the furnace, into the metal that is heating, rising, burning. It can barely accommodate his shoulders, but as it happens, he finds the innards of the active furnace to be blissfully warm. So he huddles there, his legs to his chest, waiting for something to happen. Something to happen.

Nothing to happen ever again.

...

But the music of the sax, the promise of Maplemas, and the furnace is only a mere fantasy, illusion, whatever it could be called. The only thing that seems real is the half-unfinished lemon tea, Marianne's stumbling back to her room, and him still looking at her door, waiting for something to happen. He reaches for the doorknob.

Indeed her boss is a very polarizing man.

* * *

She pens the letter with the slow grace of a stork etching swirls over a rocky ocean. Every now and then, her fingers stop at an important word, one that would require the dictionary or thesaurus to remember because she more than anything does not want her deteriorating emotions to imprint itself onto a letter for the most important person of all.

What is it like for the mind to deteriorate? Most people don't remember the motion once it has come to pass, but to Aria, she is reminded time and time again that her mind will go dark until she becomes a vegetable housing a heart and lungs.

"What are you doing up so late?" Neinheart says out from the dead silence of night, a lantern placed close to his face showing his solemn, flickering, spooked figure.

"Oh, it's just you," Aria says, shivering again. "I'm just writing the letters. We're almost done, just a couple more."

All of a sudden, Neinheart could not bring himself to speak anything, not even a conversation with his favorite person in the world. He occupies himself, gracing the candles at the corners of the chamber with the light of the lantern, giving light, illumination, clarity to the gritty room. The draperies over the bed hangs torn, as if done by a raging gorilla, with a piece of fabric dangling over the center of the bed like a ghost, or perhaps the work of a ghost. But a ghost of whom? Neinheart cannot imagine...

"Thank you, Neinheart" Aria says out from the darkness as well, shattering Neinheart's therapeutic chain of thoughts. He really wants to scream but what else can he do? How can he bear to tell her that they had this same conversation thrice already? Aria senses his fears, frustration, and melancholy that she had sensed thrice before but without a memory, what else can she do but repeat the same concern? "I'm going to leave the world soon, I think, I'm sure. I wish there was more I could do to ensure a happier future for you. At this point, I would understand if you do not accept this letter."

"What is it?" Neinheart asks, not turning his eyes away from the single, hanging fabric, fearing that should he break away from this very simple thing, he might perceive nothing but the ugliness in Aria's deterioration. She is finished, he reminds himself. She is going to be free, finally. The last thing he would want is scream out the anguish of caring for someone who could no longer help herself. Who could not sympathize with his sadness. Who could not do anything but degrade to only instincts and reflexes. _I do not want her to become just a piece of..._

_fabric. Yes, the colors of this fabric, scarlet, weaved so tightly and meticulously, especially around the fringing edge that ripped so easily._

"It's my will," Aria says, breaking Neinheart's thoughts once again. "For you to ease into the role of emperor. I don't know if you would still want to fight or surrender or anything. But no matter what you do, make sure that you do not let any of this affect what you feel is correct for you."

_The Aria I love so much will_...

"Emperor Neinheart. You know what? That suits you!"

"I will only be regent until we find your heir."

"Sure, whatever. Now that that is settled, I have a favor to ask you. I'm going to need you to help me write a couple of letters. At least," Aria looks up with her eyes. "Five hundred. They're all going to be for Phantom!"

He could say 'yes' the same way he did thrice before. But this never-ending loop, this madness that seems so much like the thread of fate left on the spinner. Destiny, destiny. Why can't she just go away sooner? He cannot think anymore. "Maybe tomorrow," Neinheart sighs, and then solemnly moves out of the room to look forward to tomorrow morning.

* * *

Eunwol can hear the spirit of Ereve hanging lowly between the pillars of the marble walkways at Ereve's station. They whisper news of Empress Aria, lacking. Where did their Empress go? Eunwol cannot decide whether there is still worth in hating Aria. Worth was probably never really there. All she ever has was the pure hatred for their greatest enemy and, after that enemy's passing, her future would be truly hate-less and lacking. They might have a parade for the victory, brand her medals for heroics such as failing to save Aria, failing to avenge her, hurting Phantom. These medals, Eunwol decides, are merely a means to depreciate their suffering.

"This is...?" Neinheart asks, meeting her at the garden before the gates, his eyes sagging with fatigue just like Eunwol's own. Even before she unwraps the tablecloth, Neinheart already have an inkling of an idea of what lies beneath, this round thing the size of, to put bluntly, a severed head.

Spotting Aria half-concealed behind the pillar of the gates, Eunwol stops in her motions. "Ne-ne!" she calls in a voice that pretends to be childish. She pushes the gates open and trips onto the flowers, magenta this month, when scrambling for her advisor.

"You're supposed to stay in your room," Neinheart says, picking her off the ground. She grasps at his arm like an octopus as if he might disappear forever from sight after she lets go.

"Who's this?" Aria asks, shielding herself behind Neinheart. "She's ugly." Eunwol could not care to take offense. The three of them return to Aria's chambers and the first thing Eunwol sees are two boxes of letters and a bowl of something, medicine from the smell. The bowl remains untouched and something about that seems to anger Neinheart. He meditates on the bowl with a sullen, suppressed expression, so much that it is hard to tell whether he is about to cry or scream in anger. Something, something bad will happen very, very soon.

"The medicine is very bitter, isn't it?" Eunwol asks, dispelling the horrors in Neinheart's psyche, cooing Aria with the same tune as her childishness.

"It is! It is!" Aria points out.

"Let me handle this," Eunwol tells Neinheart.

"You?" he skeptically replies.

"I used to babysit. Can you go bring us some pastries. Cake, the sweeter, the better. Don't worry. She'll drink the whole thing in no time."

"...Alright," Neinheart calmly says, gently closing the door as he leaves. The window is blowing in a light breeze that brushes the wind-chimes, but the chamber soon becomes quiet when Eunwol slams the window shut. Leaning her back against the window, Eunwol notes the state of the bed and wonder if some turbulent storm has passed through at that very location.

"You can stop pretending to be dumb now," Eunwol says. Aria reels with slight shock at first but conceals it quickly and adeptly.

"You of all people could tell I was pretending?" Aria asks. "Not Neinheart. Not Phantom. You? I suppose you want to know why or even how?"

"Save it. This is not my matter. If I were to guess, it is something something Neinheart or something something Phantom. I would not even comment on your mask if it were not for the incredibly sad look on your advisor's face. How funny of you to punish him such."

"Punish, certainly, but how much compared to other alternatives?"

"You cannot avoid these so-called alternatives. You will die one day and once that happens, what will happen to them?" Aria could not tell whether she is referring to Neinheart, Phantom, the Heroes, or her people and country.

"Even if you say that, after today, I won't even remember this conversation ever happened," Aria admits. "There is nothing I could do." She looks away, downcast. "There is only however long it will take to protect them. I...I don't even want to imagine what will happen after this madness takes away my life." Eunwol makes no response but just stares unnervingly at her, not with pity or malice, or emotion for that matter as if she too has turned as numb as Phantom when he was rescued. "What?"

"I don't get it."

Aria cannot help but repeat, "What?"

"Did you assume that you are so important that even after you die, they would forever suffer? Or do you just want that to happen because you are a narcissistic little princess vying for the attention of people whose heartstrings you think you could pull."

"I am not a narcissist!" she complains, the only retort her mind could conjure. Eunwol sees then just how vulnerable Aria really is.

"Then stop making Neinheart watch you slip away little by little. Stop drawing out this torture. Stop giving him memories of nothing but hopelessness. You care about him, you start by stop thinking that you live in some story where everyone is obligated to you."

Aria takes the insult offensively at first, and only after a deep process did she regain some sort of confidence. Perhaps everything in her current world is just a mist in which she is only telling herself what she really is versus what she is not. Is noble. Not malicious. Is caring. Not selfish. Is with Phantom. Not an empress. Is alive. Not dying. Maybe it is about time to convince herself that everyone would be better off if she allows them time to accept her death. "Do you think I'm a bad person?" Aria asks, truly wishing for Eunwol's pure, truthful opinion of her.

"I think we all yearn to label our deeds as something commendable."

"Then is there anything, just one thing that I have done that could be truly genuine?"

"Your love," she answers, right as Neinheart returns with the cake. Not feeling too good, Eunwol excuses herself to dispose of the wrapped sphere she had returned with.

The next day, Aria passes.

* * *

Marianne wakes up to a soft sensation, like snow soothing past the top of her head. Her eyes do not yet accept the light of her surroundings but the very surface of her skin senses a warmth as soothing as baked bread. Illusions seem to pepper her world, so it takes her a while to appreciate the blindfolds over her eyes and the spiny bristles binding her hands together. The sensation that graces her head leaves and her next sensation is a hand gripping below her jaw, forcing her mouth open. A touch of salty, oily skin slips a smooth object down her tongue. Another object enters her mouth. And another. Three, long, slender, careful, surgical fingers presses against her tongue, forcing her esophagus to open and accept the the smooth object but only the sounds of her own gagging is apparent to her.

"You always ask for the truth of what happened to me. You should know that it is several times worse that what you are feeling now," coos the voice from somewhere so close she can feel the hot breath condensing on the creases of her ears. The fingers pull out. "Oh, and it lasted a lot longer too."

"What are you doing?" is what Marianne wants to say but nothing comes out from her voice but panic and cries. The corner of her lips are sore, and probably red and a small amount of liquid is seeping from her eyes.

Something from her waist slips down her legs and her thighs are much cooler, much airier, now. Realizing what is about to happen, she kicks her legs, hitting meat. There is a crash, followed swiftly by glass splattering.

No other sounds reach her ears.

Is it over?

Hands clutch at her throat with two thumbs resting on the ridges of her larynx. "I did not want to do this," he growls, controlled as if someone in a neighboring room might overhear. "But I changed during those months. This is the only thing I could do to hold back the urge."

_What urge? _A sadistic spark of an idea lights up Marianne's mind. If she fights back, then this man, older than her, stronger than her, might just kill her.

"I'm only fifteen," is what Marianne wants to say as a body and lips presses down on the smooth rises and falls of her skin, her hips, her shoulder blade, her chest. She pretends that she is not herself any longer when she is flipped over and her head is shove into something hard, a wall, a corner, or something much more sinister, she does not want to know. But her mind imagines, for an infinitely brief time, that his motions are too swift and practiced to have been something initiated at the spur of the moment.

"Please, let me go," is what Marianne wants to plead when the strings of her shirt shreds away, broken, exposing her white, hairless, naked, meaty, beating back, so delicate and pure and tasty. Phantom picks up a ruler with a metallic edge and imagines the precision, skillfulness, how surgical the whipping would be. The callous hand descends.

Crack.

Blink. Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop. Drip. The faucet is running.

Phantom is washing his hands again and he can hardly believe that he had just imagined the whipping he would inflict on Marianne. He imagines a little further too: spitting on her red-lashed back and making her thank him for the healing saliva. The cup of lemon tea lies below the running water. A door squeaks. "Good morning, boss," Marianne says, still groggy. "Man, that nap took so long."

Before she can take a second step out of her room, Phantom, "Do not come close to me!" screams, echoes, spikes on the tongue, a guillotine hanging overhead, something terrible about to happen. "Get back in your room right now!"

"What happened, boss?"

"Go!" The cup flies and splatters into a million pieces at Marianne's feet.

Finally the door slams shut and locks.

Phantom stands by the sink and thinks nothing, listening to the running water for however long he needs to regain his sanity. Once something resembling self-control returns, Phantom takes a long look at the two crates of letters which came not an hour ago.

Something happened to Phantom in those imprisoned months. The only thing stopping him from burning the world is the precious life of Aria for which now he shall never receive again. He starts to imagine a future for himself, a privilege he could never receive while a thief, and fears.

The very next day, Phantom sends Marianne back to her hometown. Alone, he picks up the first letter on top of the crates and starts a marathon of reading. He promises right then and there that he would never let this pain, darkness, secret overcome him.

So he does.

* * *

Eunwol did not try to comfort Neinheart. He is vulnerable, in need of love, of direction, of a replacement for his dear empress and the most foolish thing to do now is to provide that in any form and let him cling onto it like a hysteric mother. Neinheart must not fear having something else to lose. If they are to win this war, Eunwol decides, he must see the world as one giant loss, a debt which can only be paid with the shedding of darkness's blood.

After the funeral, a letter arrives randomly in the mailbox as if delivered by the drifting wind. From Phantom, it reads on the envelope.

* * *

A nice sizzling of frying potatoes lies in the background. Out the window to her right, a strike of thunder cracks the heated air of the diner. Wayward commoners twists their voices with the atmosphere of drifting smoking from the lamps on every table. Eunwol laughs, manically to herself, coincidentally while facing Neinheart. The six of them, so-called Heroes, are finally ready to unite. Many would probably note this as some celebratory moment when the tides of battle turn, chivalry and glory, haha. Victory is drawing ever near as Phantom enters, eyes that appear as if he hadn't had a good sleep for months, with a soaked umbrella and takes his place opposite from her and Neinheart.

He orders dessert only, a slice of pecan pie.

"Sorry I'm late even though I technically arranged the meeting," Phantom says with a smile, earning a few interesting looks from Neinheart and Eunwol.

"What is so secretive that you have to personally meet us to discuss?" Neinheart asks. "Is it about..."

"Oh, no!" he says, animated like a sensitive young girl in love for the first time. "Not her, no. I needed to personally hand you these documents I found at a facility in Magatia. It's a decoder for the coded messages that our enemy are using. I'm sure this isn't the only decoder, but at least it could get you started on winning this war."

"You?" Eunwol asks, sensing something wrong, something she would not expect. "You are going to join us for the final battle, correct?"

He changes from smiling to trying to smile. "I'm quitting," he says as if he is allowed to quit.

"What?" Eunwol returns, trying to remain calm. "Just because Aria died?"

"Because I had enough of this pain. I'm sorry, but the way this story is going to end is not six heroes coming together to fight the great evil. That is...not what a happy ending is, at least for me. It sounds selfish, but I think if we are to live, truly live, we must find this happy ending instead of looking at what others want us to do."

"But her legacy—."

"Is something that I have already sacrificed enough for, wouldn't you say? When you handed me over for Lang, it was because her spirit powers are stronger than anything I could ever be capable of. At that time, you thought without me you could still win the final battle. So, what changed now?" He does not mean anything sarcastic or hateful with that comment. No, from his eyes straying downward, and his mouth open in regret, unable to explain any further, it is obvious that he feels defeated. Or pretends. Eunwol cannot tell, cannot read him, and that scares her.

"You're going to talk about sacrifice? How about you talk about me? What about all the things that I have done for this team?" She grabs him by the collar. "I cannot say I know exactly what it is that you have been through but get this straight: the things you have felt, the five of us have felt in one way or another. If you abandon us now, none of us would let you have your happy ending."

"Then," he smiles again. "How about a trade? I will help you, but you must be ready to accommodate whatever I need from you."

Eunwol sees where this is heading. "What do you want?" She relaxes her grip.

Phantom smiles and recalls the many times he ate at a restaurant.

* * *

For the first time in Eunwol's life, she could barely see what is in front of her as the mist covers her in either a pool of vivid, diluted vapor or a blue-shaded, puddle-scattered light. The warm, humid rain sticks to her skin like sweat and she breathes in a humid, suffocating air. This ocean of heat, very much like a out-pour of lava, drips down her face, warming it, boiling wherever it flows. Splash. Splash. Splash. Two sets of splashes. Phantom holds her hands, but neither are guiding the other. They know where their next destination would be.

Her boots stop on the mud at the edge of a misty lake. The rain thickens, and everything is so warm, she feels as if her body is bleeding from the head down. A lightning strikes. And she falls, face first, into the lake, cool in comparison to the air above, soothing, drowning.

But in the end, the callous hand tightly touches her string of life and a dragon descends from between two dark clouds to deliver them to their final battle.

* * *

**A/N: **If anyone had been inspired by this story, then I would be so so so so so so so happy! This story took me so much energy to write (the last half was particularly emotionally taxing).

Anyways, I mainly write one-shots to get people to think a little deeper when writing, so if anyone wants to "steal" a concept from this story or any of my stories, feel free to do so. This is the internet and I do not get paid to write. Also I am a beta-reader, so whatever stuff you give'th, I will read'th.**  
**


	4. Flowers that Wilt

**A/N:** Fanfic Challenge details on the bottom.

This is the sequel to It Was a Wonderful Game. It should be two chapters back, so please read that before reading this because...sequel? In any case, this sequel is based on the idea that *spoiler!* Luminous was not killed off at the end of It Was a Wonderful Game.

Dedicated to Katekyo1412 who made me realize that there is an ending beyond the ending and Kyrastri who gave me valuable feedback and the best title I could ever ask for a story. Check out their stories!

* * *

Even the team, hand-picked by Grendel himself, needs to take a second, frozen glance at the wet body on the bed. The head doctor touches the patient first, opens his shirt and brushes the blood out of the way. "Clean the wounds, gauze, defibrillator," says the head doctor from within his rubber suit. "Ten seconds," he adds, when no one moves. They clean him as perfectly as they could with all the fabric they have. But regardless of care, the flaps of skin still breaks open into a stream of blood.

"What do we do?" asks Dr. Goulas, Grendel's god-daughter and a gifted resident doctor.

The head doctor continues to rubs the paddles with jelly. "We try," he replies, placing them over the patient. "Clear." Bump. No response. "Once more. Clear." Bump. "Increase the voltage. Clear." Bump. "Increase. Clear." Bump. "Once more. Clear." "Increase. Clear." "Once more..." Following each increase, his voice becomes increasingly hollow. Dr. Goulas supposes that some dissociation is required when he orders the voltage increased to a point that can break an elephant.

"That's not going to help him," Goulas says right before he presses the paddles again.

Hesitance. "Time?" he asks, loosening his grip. "Tell the cleaning unit to wash him with at least two thousand cycles. And Grendel as well. Inform him that he had made a big mistake in endangering the lives of our country's best people." He rocks the bed as he leaves through the automatic doors, fist clenched, eyes downcast.

The others start to leave as well.

"Wait," Dr. Goulas gushes, turning slowly to the patient whose expression is as peaceful as it is bloody. "He's still alive, I think." She is unsure whether she even has the authority to contradict the head doctor, but her wishes propels her to try.

"You have to let it go," says the head nurse, sympathetic and irritated all at once. Goulas tries to produce something convincing but the medical personnel forms a broken semi-circle around her, watching her as if she has been taken by shock.

There is no other choice. If she responds unfavorably now, the result would be her eventual loss especially once Grendel hears of it. She nods and exits with everyone else, although a nagging feeling has embedded itself underneath her wrist.

Midway through unzipping her hazmat suit, she still could in no way describe this nagging sensation. The more she tries to bury it to oblivion, the more it engraves into her skin. All at once the cleaning crew comes in with an airtight body bag and she imagines,_ if they put him in there, he would asphyxiate._ He won't of course. He is dead. He must be dead. In the brief moment which the automatic door opens for the crew, she catches sight of the patient and could not convince herself.

_Was his head leaning to the right or left when I left him?_

She tells herself that this is all hunches and illusions. But her wishes, those strong wishes, takes her, throws her even, onto his body like she is his shield. "Stop! No, he's still alive," she frantically screams. She touches his wrist at the same place where the sensation was. "Luminous," Goulas says, and it is not his pulse that responds, but his light, hidden at the very thick of his black-stained hand.

"Luminous," she repeats but her nerves skips a beat when she hears four muffled booms like from a gun. A nurse immediately rushes to the window and from the startled reaction, Dr. Goulas assumes that someone must have been fatally shot.

* * *

Luminous wakes up on a day when his skin has drifted from its original pitch black to an ashen grey. A sense of deep loss overcomes him when the partition of sunlight brushes on the very edge of his fingertips. The touch of cold air. He questions the very being of his situation, _was it all a dream?, _his eyes staring at what is clearly the ceiling of the hospital, _or is this the afterlife?_ He lifts his hand closer to the fabric of air above him, but not all the way, afraid of breaking the flimsy bubble that makes up his current consciousness.

Cold needles crawl through his spine when he twists his head and sees a woman on a neighboring bed. Who could she be? _Is she also in the afterlife?_ Opening that possibility to himself is both fearful and cathartic. She is on her laptop, doing something that requires her glasses, plenty of typing, and plenty of scanning. She turns her head around the room, skips over Luminous, then quickly faces him when she recognizes something is wrong.

For a while they look at one another, two strangers who does not enjoy the presence of the opposite sex. Despite this, they peer something in each other. Something opposing, two bubbles that would never touch. He appears as a baby, plump and cherubic pale from his stay in the hospital. She, on the other hand, has a nose and eyes which crop out such that her face appears to sink in with every dimply smile. She is young, perhaps fresh out of university, but already appears humbled beyond her years. Luminous could imagine her playing a witch for Halloween and certainly her scattered, curly hair helps in that regard.

What is she doing in the same room with him? They are like two puzzle pieces from different boxes which only happens to connect edge to edge, bed to bed. They meet today only by mere chance. With any normal people, they would introduce one another.

But Luminous is too pragmatic to muster that strength.

His eyes roll back for more rest. She goes back to rapping her keyboard.

Luminous tucks his blanket in. Even though they are spread apart by a floor chilled with air conditioning, there is a fragrant sweetness in being upon the company of a human without the smell of rubber dividing their personal boundaries.

* * *

According to the nurse who talks to him through the speakers, they would not allow anyone, not even Phantom, to go into the room, not even in a suit, because a former doctor has gone mad and touched his bare skin. There is a small memory of the contact, the most infinitesimal of bonds, mere grains of dust, encoded on his skin. It is said that this small connection pulled him out from the brink of certain death.

On a particularly boring day, Luminous searches for news of the influence's progression in Edelstein. Nothing wells up from within him even when it should. _Seven thousand dead_. His stay in the hospital has sparked his apathy. Even the news of Garnet's murder is so intangible, does nothing to him but swing a quick moment of disappointment for the loss of a bright mind.

Pushing the computer away, he lifts himself off the bed and looks all the more ready to leave through the shut double doors. They would never open, not unless the emergency button is pressed. And perhaps even then. In the corner above his bed, a camera has full view of the shared room. This hospital is imprisoning, so Luminous finds it odd that his roommate would have a heart-shaped pillow hung above her bed by a crooked nail.

He eyes her stuff with scrutiny. The stack of books next to the side of her bed, partially brushed by the tassels on her queen-sized blanket. Rainbow daisies on each side of her moccasins which he would notice if she had ever worn them. She glances up from a green hardcover and is struck by the absolute unresponsiveness with which Luminous looks at her.

He finally catches her staring right back, feels ashamed, then asks, "How are you feeling today?"

"Excuse me?" Her eyebrows convey her confusion. He has woken up for a couple of days now, never saying a word. Why bother now?

"You're here with me, so I assumed that you are," pause, corrects himself, "or were sick."

This train of thought could not have arrived spontaneously. No, not after they spent days sleeping within the very same cramp cubic meters with one another. They never even exchanged names, only questions like, 'Do you need to use the bathroom now? I have to shower.'

"I was," she touches briefly because she is very intrigue to find out whether he would continue the conversation or leave her rightfully alone.

"I sense that you do not enjoy my presence very much." A creeping thought comes in his head. Is she here because he had infected her like the mobs have predicted? Is that really surprising considering that Garnet herself died for the very same reason? Yet most inexplicable of all is how uninterested she looks when she lowers her green book.

"Gee, I wonder what tipped you off," she remarks, eyes returning to her literature.

"But, we haven't met before, have we?"

"Do we have to meet for me to dislike you?" the woman asks boringly. "I mean you did invade and destroy my home country."

It makes sense then. He should have noticed it sooner: the slight crook of her nose, the arching of her brows, and the feisty attitude that Victorian society would never promote in a woman. She has the features of a citizen of Edelstein.

"I had no choice," he explains. "We had to liberate the citizens from the Black Wings. Would you rather they continued to enslave, oppress, even brainwash innocent lives?"

"I always wonder about that, actually," she says. "The Black Wings trained me in mathematics so that I would benefit the organization some day. They also didn't like my parents' political opinions and made their lives harder than most. Still that wasn't too bad compared to when my parents got shot by a couple of Alliance archers."

The story stuns Luminous. He never thought that he would one day be locked in the same room as someone who was damaged by his side of the war. He only manages to say, "I'm sorry, but at the very least, your life is better."

She blinks a couple of times as if she could not fathom the existence of such a naive man. "You're kidding me, right? After my parents died, the Alliance decided that I could benefit the war. They assigned me in a camp and drilled mathematics into my mind. Is that better? Because without my parents that's just a little less than what I had before the Alliance came."

"That's not my fault. You should not dislike me over what you life turned out to be."

"And I don't. I hate you for your involvement in destroying my country, not in the way my life turned out. But that was so long ago, I wouldn't even care if you had not order the crystallization of over five hundred citizens. Don't you ever find that horrifying?"

"Why should I be horrified? It was protocol."

"Sure. Call it whatever you want. That will not change my mind over you."

"Then you should not hate just me. This society, the evolution of disease, the roots of evil. Even destiny as it gives you the short end of the stick."

"Maybe. If that is what you call my step-sister getting shot right outside the hospital last week."

Ding. Ding. Ding.

The speaker sparks into life. "Luminous? Hello? You are free to leave the hospital. Just go through the door. It should open for you now. Mr. Phantom is outside to pick you up."

"I still have to talk to her," he replies, as if the speakers can listen and respond to him.

"Just go," the woman says, irritated.

On the taxi ride to Ellinia, Phantom told him about the cute woman that Luminous was rooming with for the past week. She is Dr. Goulas, the one who touched him that day and lost her license in the process. Luminous then finds how silly it is to feel like he owes her at least his gratitude.

* * *

The courtroom freezes for the brief second when Luminous enters. The benches for the audience are mostly bare, as with any insignificant trial, except for the immediate family of the perpetrator and victim. Luminous could hardly believe that he came in the faith that retribution would be served for Garnet's death when the modern court system is such a farce.

The woman who shot Garnet is a mother of three whose ancestral ties belongs to Victoria Island for up to three generations and who also had served in that war over ten years ago. Every twitch of her eyes indicates the memory of the pitch black things she had waded through on the battlefield. Except then, no one judged her so harshly for her kills nor suppressed her when in the face of distress. This whole trial must be some sort of betrayal to her.

Is that why she looks so spooked? Or maybe she sees the ghost which haunts her with the same fried smoke and black blood that spewed out from Garnet's wounds.

The defense played with her apparent insanity. Her records indicate mental illness post-war, an obsessive preoccupation with guarding her children, and a pistol she keeps locked by her bedside. The prosecutor touches on something very peculiar, though. The doctor who was sent back from Edelstein was ultimately cured and recently released from the hospital. Ergo, Garnet would not have died if she was not shot.

During the recess before the final decision, Luminous learns a lot more about Dr. Goulas and Garnet from Garnet's family. They grew up together and were both god-daughters of Grendel. While Goulas never spoke of her fiery opinions on Victoria's involvement in Edelstein, she fervently objected to Garnet's internship to Edelstein. Involvement was not a solution to her. Not even in the lowest sense. Luminous is shocked, once more, that Goulas would rather Edelstein die by the influence. Maybe she thought the same exact thing that he did about Evan going.

How ironic, then, the ultimate story. He, who came to Evan's aid, became infected. She, who Goulas had expected to never return, returned to die. He, who did not have long to live, survived by the touch of Garnet's sister.

He could no longer find it in his heart to wish retribution for Garnet's death because she had been correct. He did bring the influence back home. It did spread. Given what she believed, it was right that she did what she did. Her only fault was not knowing how good of a person Garnet was and how wonderful the story could have ended if she had not die prematurely.

At last, they find her guilty in murder and illegal possession of weaponry. It is better, Luminous suppose. If she had been found insane, she could see her children but from a psychiatric ward where she would be kept indefinitely, at the mercy of a therapist's approval.

On the taxi ride back to Ellinia, Luminous humors the idea on what verdict would have been if the influence really was incurable and that there was no doubt that Garnet would have died either way. The thought would render him insane, so he turns his head to the window that faces the trees and lets the song of Ellinia soothe him. In periodic bursts, however, his heart would beat almost maniacally followed by an uncontrollable breathing.

* * *

Phantom practically dances with a spring in each step when he deposit his suit, tie, even the pants, onto the sofa, laying almost entirely bare in front of Luminous while he is eating apricot stew. What tasteful scenery.

"How did the job interview go?" Luminous manages to ask, somehow, after Phantom returns in his other formal clothes, the ones he is known for wearing and almost never taking off.

"Nope," he quips in an embarrassed rush. Luminous knows not to comment further even though his bank account could not support the both of them for another month. He doesn't recall ever worrying over money, only the impending doom of the end of the world, and in some ways neither of them ever imagined there being a story after the ending. Enemies, allies, friends for many years, Phantom and Lumi had run out of topics to bond over. It is nicer this way, more symbiotic and less necessary. It comes as a surprise, then, when Phantom says,

"Hey, you want to tell me why Grendel is e-mailing me to tell you to read your e-mails?" He is squinting his eyes, hunched to the corner with his laptop as if he had been looking up something racy and costs a subscription of 200k mesos a month.

"Is it any of your concern?" Luminous returns.

"Ouch. Why do you have to be so cold to me?! But seriously, though, when you are tense like this it means you are doing something you are not supposed to."

"I am not reading his e-mails." He keeps a stony facade, thinking it would get Phantom to stop pestering. Except that is what makes Luminous so easy to read, and so much fun for Phantom to toy with.

"Let me think. What would Grendel, an old man with tons of adopted kids, want with a virile, single young man? Ah, maybe he's going to introduce you to Jessica! I heard she is quite the hotty. Boin, boin, if you know what I mean."

"You're still filth."

"Ooh, with dirty talk like that, you'll be getting kisses in no time." Laughs. "So, I'm thinking Grendel wants you back in Edelstein?"

Upon that last word, the things at the very depths of Luminous's mind emerges so completely, he could find no way to avoid it. '_Crystal! Wash! A thousand cycles! All of them!'_ '_Quarantine them and perform a thorough check!' 'Do you want to watch me in so much pain?' _Luminous simply decides, "I'm not going," and braces for the eventual nagging of 'but poor Evan'.

It does not come. Rather, he says "I'm glad," with a sort of calm.

And that makes him think more and more about those things at the very depths of his mind. He digs further and further with each sip of his stew, the liquid melting away the shell of his resistance until a core is exposed. _Garnet._ _What if... What if I killed all those people for... for..._

Ding. Dong.

The doorbells in Ellinia has a flowery texture.

Phantom picks it up and Luminous glances to see if it might be Grendel at this unexpected middle of the day. Nope. Just a fairy girl, wide-eyed, green and purple motif abound, no one special. Luminous chews a chunk of lettuce while examining the fairy. The pattern on her dress is of interest to him. Why? Floral. Colors. Where have he—?

"Just some girl selling overpriced cookies for her school club," Phantom says when he notices him staring.

"Who was she?"

"You mean her name? Well I didn't catch it, but if she goes to the high school, I think I can ask around. You're not...into high-schoolers are you...?"

"Shut up. It's that symbol on her dress. I've seen it somewhere. But where?"

* * *

Days later, Luminous finds the strength to return to the hospital.

Dr. Muller, the head doctor for Luminous's case, says in a collected accent, "How did you get in here?", once he returns to his office, a cramped, overfilled archive of a space barely big enough for the both of them and decorated with nothing, not a plant, not even the doctor's credentials. Luminous doubts anyone would ever use such a messy place, but the way the doctor effortlessly maneuvers over his desk means otherwise.

He looks very pleasant, like someone who would not be surprised, even in the slightest, at the most surprising thing in the world. Their eyes meet and Luminous notes the red and black motif in his eyes and hair respectively. It is familiar and fearfully so, both within and without him, both in the present and in memory. They are probably the same age, which was also the age when the Black Mage tossed away his light like an old rag.

"Your secretary let me in," Luminous answers and Dr. Muller acts as if that had answered everything. He scribbles less than five words in a personal notebook before turning his attention back to Luminous. "I want to ask about the influence," Luminous goes on. "How exactly did I survive?"

"The same way any disease is survived," Dr. Muller answers, neither grand nor ill-spirited, but somehow the beating in Luminous's chest quickens.

"What are you trying to say...?"

"That you survived because your body lasted long enough to mount an immune response against foreign antigens. I don't think I need to go into too much detail, seeing that you were a head researcher."

Luminous consciously chooses to not believe the good doctor. "Why are you lying to me?"

"What do you mean? Did, did you think that the influence would have the same mortality rate in Edelstein as is here?" Luminous could not answer, thinking that, from the way Dr. Muller worded it, it must be the simplest thing in the world. "The truth is, once the worse of stage two has passed, the body given enough strength could fight back. You know the medical slang? The body is fiercest at its weakest."

"That's impossible. How would you explain the one hundred percent mortality rate in Edelstein then?"

"Inadequate medical care," Dr. Muller replies immediately. " It's very simple. Victoria Island has several advantages Edelstein does not. Clean water, a carefully structured diet, doctors around the clock, and emergency blood transfusions. You should not need me to explain why all this is important for patients, right?" Luminous remembers Garnet then, and the cloths she had brought to cleanse him and the soup that tasted like soap and black coffee. The thought of him accepting them because it made her felt better about herself seems practically naive now. All along, it wasn't her that needed to feel guilty for having him stained with her risky procedures. No, he had always been the patient and her the doctor.

"It's not that simple," Luminous refutes without a good reason for doing so. "It can't be. I've seen patients lose their pulse and enough blood to be declared brain dead right then and there."

"Well." The doctor's tone sharpens a little, almost like he has his own secrets he cannot bear to admit. "We had thought the same thing until Dr. Goulas changed our minds. She ordered a transfusion for you after discovering that you had a pulse that even our instruments could not detect."

"Then it is luck that saved me. Or her intuition."

"You can certainly put it that way. With her quick thinking, we now have a procedure with a ninety percent recovery rate."

Luminous could barely accept the news. He wants to leave so without even saying goodbye, he rushes for the door and lets his leg take him wherever. And wherever he goes, the voice from his past memories bothers him even when he can barely breathe.

* * *

"Do I really need the suit?" Luminous asks the nurse.

"It's only for your protection," she responds with a fun wink and a fluff of her powdery wings. He enters the double doors of the buffer room, an extra room placed between the outside and the quarantine chamber where Goulas rooms. It is pitch black with a few lights, but that did not bother him in the slightest until the doors open and he is face to face with her. Looking through plastic glass again for the first time since Edelstein gives everything an uneven, glossy glare as his brain attempts to sort out this new reality.

His body remembers how cold it was. "You seem lost," Goulas says with an uncharacteristic pleasantness that probably has more to do with the echo in the suit than any change of her temperament. "Here's your stuff back. I figure you would come back for it eventually." She drops a black lab journal inside the cardboard box on her lap and shoves the whole item closer to him, as far as her arms could go.

What is this? He does not recall ever bringing these items here until he realizes that they were all from his visitors: Phantom's computer, sandals with the tag still on, some books, several towels, that black journal and an extra fluffy blanket.

"All set," Goulas observes.

"I didn't come here to pick up these things." He lays the journal to where it belongs. "I wanted to thank you and..." He crosses her bedside and examines the pattern on the moccasins, the same one as the girl from days before.

It is the symbol, Phantom had informed him, of the Luminosity Scouts, his fan-club, basically. The official site describes their mission as, "Building Maplers of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place as inspired by the fifth hero."

Luminous points at the moccasins with his toes and comments, "I'll be honest. You did not strike me as the type to join such a ridiculous organization."

"You did not strike me as the type to lack courage, confidence, or character, but here we are. Everyone makes mistakes, but I can live with the fact that I've sold chocolates for charity and read to children with leukemia."

"Your sister's death had nothing to do with me!" Luminous growls, unsure where his anger is coming from.

Goulas sees the fear in Luminous's eyes and responds with, "I don't blame you for her death. The person who shot her got what she deserved."

"Then why do you look at me as if I am beneath you? Stop looking at me!"

"Leave then. I cannot imagine a whole lot of reasons for you to still be here and argue."

He does not leave, of course. He is obligated to stay. "You said that I ordered the deaths of hundreds of people. But if you were me and believed what I had believed, you would have done the exact same thing."

"Perhaps. It's hard to say. I might. I might not. Unless I have been in your position, it is impossible for me to say I understand what you felt or why you did it. But, there is no question that you ordered—!"

Blood suddenly spews from her mouth, at first red, but what drips down later is both black and oozy, which sticks to her lips and falls like tar. Her body slightly wobbles before falling back to the wall behind her. "Hey! No, no. Doctor!" Luminous screams, shuddering in fear. He touches her cheeks with a rubber glove and reflected in her irises are him in the hazmat suit and, right behind those pupils of hers, something black squirms as if alive and feasting. He checks for spots on her arms but it is a variation he has never seen before. Veins, dark red veins that does not seem to travel with her blood vessels. It seems to be an entirely new system of its own, lines, which end in sooty, daisy-like nodes and grows all the way into her chest. And growing.

* * *

Luminous had only stayed long enough for them to bring in a syringe of crystals. He knows nothing more.

_She was infected because she touched me.  
_

In the taxi towards home, he lifts up the photograph of his friends, the six plus Evan clipped in the corner and muses over what Freud would do. Probably sprout out some nonsense like, "I would not let the influence take any more lives," because he likes to talk of ideals and not reality.

"Taxi, bring me to Grendel's library," Luminous says just when he is at the front of his tree-home.

At the front desk, he says, "Bring me to Grendel," to the secretary.

"Oh, Luminous. I am so glad you're here. You absolutely must talk some sense into that old geezer. I had just about enough of his tantrums." Did he hear her correctly? Grendel throwing tantrums? What are the odds?

Maybe the stress of the job has finally overtaken him. "Is something the matter?"

"I don't know! And that's what bugs me the most. He came back from a conference yesterday and just fired all the employees. Also, the queue for the job advancement has become unbearable. Arrrgggh, why did they think it was a good idea to create a new magician branch now of all times?" Ramble, ramble, this, that. Luminous walks ahead of her and invites himself into Grendel's personal library on the upper floor.

The smell is impossible to bear. The tiredness and discouragement that had inhabited this space since the eve of the outbreak last year might have contributed to the pungent atmosphere. But really the worse is the drunken old geezer, in all sense of the word, lying in his own drool at the space in the corner.

Luminous did not want to touch him, because he cannot respect this sudden change in Grendel's image. "Wake up. I'm here. I'm finally here," he says as close to Grendel's ear as he is willing to.

"Gra, grum, uh, wazzat? Ma, ma, tch. Cor. Cack." The hair beneath his eyebrows shows signs of movement and little else. "Oh, Luminous." His voice sounds high and drunk. How? No bottles in sight and his stench still smells like the dead things people use to fertilize their lawns.

"I'm here to answer your call," Luminous states, again, trying to remain professional. "I'm going back to Edelstein."

"Edelstein? Oh, Luminous. I don't want to talk about it." He stands up with a bit of trouble, and manages straightening himself without help. Then, after two, shuffling steps, he collapses into a cushioned office chair. Seeing him now, behind a desk neat with a jar of pens, and a deliberate spray of papers, it would be hard imagine him ever being drunk.

"Listen to me," Luminous says, one last time and louder than before. "I'm going back to Edelstein."

"And I said I don't want to talk about it! Do you really want to talk about it?!" screams Grendel, pounding the desk with so much clumsy force that papers slips off the edge.

"Is everything alright?" Luminous asks. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing," he says, voice softer but can still be considered angry, evil even. His head is downcast. "This isn't a good time to talk."

"Then when? I need you to approve of my reinstatement before I can purchase a ticket."

Grendel lets out a long, nasal cry from the back of his throat, the kind of cry that people use to curse the heavens. "I'm giving you one last chance to get out of my sight! Leave now!" He burns one of his hand with magic and makes crispy an insignificant piece of paper.

Luminous looks to the door. Grendel's wand hangs by the wall. He lets Luminous take it.

"What have gotten into you?" Luminous cautiously asks.

"It's over!" he yells. "Level five have been declared twenty-four hours ago!"

* * *

There are five levels to the response to a disease. On the fifth level, when all else is ineffective, quarantine is the only solution. A blockade with a ten mile radius buffer zone around the infected area. Anyone who moves one mile within the border gets a verbal warning. Half a mile, a warning shot. A quarter.

* * *

"Evan!" Luminous says after he has had a moment to think.

"He's never coming back," Grendel finishes in a way which no one wants to hear or imagine. "He refused to evacuate."

That sends Luminous close enough to the edge to taste a little of Eclipse. A blaze of light leaves Grendel unharmed but smolders the shelves of books behind him with a layer of ash. The arm holding the wand freezes over with ice so thin, it cannot possibly exist. If Luminous channels his darkness again, his arm would shatter from pressure.

"Why did you not force him back?" Luminous screams to the pathetic old man in a voice so disjointed it cannot possibly be his own.

But even without the radiance of a red-black darkness, he can still use the brightness of the sun, a glow so intense as to overcome the stench that precipitates the burning, Mana-glittering air.

Grendel levitates higher, one hand of flames, the other of venom, the detonator and trigger respectively for a Herculean explosion. It would not be particularly huge because a Mage of Grendel's caliber could concentrate it all into Luminous's very core with a flick of his wrist.

"You know that no one can force that boy to do what he thinks is the right thing. I am not to blame for his current state. If you had came to me when I asked you to, Evan might still be savable."

"Explain, now!" Luminous says, just about having enough with Edelstein, Garnet, and Goulas.

"We would not have a level five incident if you had been there to control the outbreak."

"Control?" This is the first time Luminous hear such a word to describe what he had done. Nothing could have prepared him to feel hatred so profound, it might just make him want to kill again.

The next blast comes out so recklessly that it catches even Grendel off guard. It did not come from his right hand.

In an ice-cracking blaze, his left arm tears right off. And the resulting pain is just sharp enough for Luminous to taste, for the first time in years, the rush of an adrenaline so worthless, it could never cover-up his despair.

...

"Heal," Grendel says, putting a hand on the stump, a wound covered by whatever is left of the sleeve. He looks at the young man lying on the ground, too numb and horrified to say anything more.

"You're making a mistake," Luminous says, clinging to that hopeless bit of consciousness, grasping at straws that cannot be touched. "Your god-daughter found a cure. Ninety percent recovery rate."

"I know. Blood transfusion. We knew about it for a while now. But the committee decided that the costs of doctors, supplies, and the risks involved do not outweigh the benefit. It was never a viable option for Edelstein. Goulas found out about it and was supposed to keep it a secret from the public."

"Why did she save me, then?" Luminous asks in disbelief, darkness coming from his eyelids. "Is it because she is a doctor? Or is...it...be...cause..."

...

Right before the light had closed for Garnet, she saw the ultimate light. Right before the light closes for Luminous, he sees colored daisies and Garnet coming to him in her pretty moccasins.

* * *

_"Hello? I need to speak to your superior immediately. Tell her this is Phantom talking... Oh, hi, Aran... I know we promised to never talk to one another... Don't you play dumb with me! He called you before he disappeared! You know something! Spill it!"_

_"Relax. He only asked what happened to all the funds that Edelstein had. I told him it was taken as reparations for the war."_

_"You're still hiding something!"_

_"That's because I'm not done yet. After that, Mious asked if Edelstein had anything at all that could raise money for doctors and medicine but come on. An ecosystem destroyed by mining and poaching. The mines themselves bought out by foreign investors. And the whole country technologically held back by at least two decades. He wanted to know if Edelstein had anything to offer at all. And I told him, 'not since the war'."_

_"That's. Why? If you word it like that, he would blame himself, blame us, for wrecking that town!"_

_"No he won't, butt-head. He would only blame himself if he had harmed his friends. You should know how Mious is better than I do."  
_

_"But."_

_"No buts. If he disappeared, it is because you annoy him. Now stop annoying me too."_

The years had been wonderful for Aran. She had fought in a war in a far off world where she survived a poison that destroyed all the melanin in her skin. As a result, she is whiter than an albino, and smells like aloe vera sunscreen all the time. Taking advantage of that, she dyed her hair red to instill vampiric fear in guerrillas, and adopted piercings that meant she kind of likes torture. A completely different person than who she was ten years ago but despite that, how much could they have really changed on the inside?

She places the phone into a pocket on her army jacket.

"Your boyfriend just called," she tells Luminous who is bathing in a lake. "I told him enough truths to get him off your trail. I'd still gladly send a squad to kidnap and sedate him though."

"If it comes to it, then do so. This is a journey I need to go to alone." He could hardly adapt to dressing up with one hand so Aran helps him into his robes. For whatever reason, she does not insist to go with him. "Corba!" he calls to the native above him. "I want to become a dragon."

But despite everything, Aran at least still plays with the idea that Luminous might not feel all sugar, spice, and everything nice when he returns to where they had lost their pasts and everything important to them.

* * *

_Gate to Past Memories  
_

Evan leans over the glass tanks and ruminates over the black slugs that make up the influence. Their abundance more than fills up the bottom of the tank such that it is impossible for any to find an open space to lay their stomachs on. If they actually need breathing for sustenance, then the ones on top would suffocate those on the bottom. As it stand, though, he knows uncomfortably little about them, the least of which is how they survive without a host. Amusingly, they are even more active in the tank than in the body and Evan imagines that their kinetic energy could contribute to a perpetual motion machine.

With that very final thought, Evan sets down his lab journal and throws a bowl of corn and potatoes against the wall.

Garnet's heart nearly skip out of her body. She manages to catch a hold of herself without relaying her displeasure. Instinctively, she crosses over the room and bend over the turned over bowl.

"Don't," Evan says and then grips the open page of his journal like he would tear something out. At the last moment, he decides to flip over to a blank page instead.

Garnet can relate with the stress of numbers and results, especially after five years with a university education. But, "It doesn't really matter," she tells Evan. "If it doesn't work, then it doesn't."

"It did. We saw it with our own eyes. They moved to your finger!" He is glowing with a fury that Garnet cannot help but feel is directed at her.

"I mean...," she hesitates to reveal her true feelings. It might hurt him so much more. "I'm sorry." And there is nothing else to add.

He stands unresponsive long enough for Garnet to start worrying and once he does moves again, he humbly ducks his head and exits without his journal.

"What's the matter?" Luminous asks, startling Garnet. She looks around and there he is, by the door, moving next to her, so close to her, as if they are more than just intern and supervisor.

"Oh, hiya, Luminous. Evan and I were running a couple of trials for our new procedure, but it's just not working as planned."

"It has really gotten the both of you down, huh?" He motions to the overturned food. "What's the problem? Maybe I can help."

"Um." Why is he so easy-going all of a sudden? Garnet catches her tongue before she spills anything important. Technically speaking, this is Evan's research, not hers.

He finally seems to notice Garnet's difficulty. "It's the influence, isn't it? They're not responding to you."

"They're not," she admits, relaxing a bit. "Actually, I think you should tell him to give up on this line of research. He probably won't listen to me, but he will definitely listen to you."

Luminous smiles at the thought. Garnet can tell it is a very, very sad smile. "If only. Anyways, I think I know what you are doing wrong. Here," he motions to the tank, "try tapping, but do it to the rhythm of the Song of Ellinia."

Garnet does not show her surprise. She is certain that something strange is going on with Luminous, but his determination, no, not only that, but his friendliness, makes it hard to deny him. Putting her finger on the glass, she plays out the melody of her hometown in her head. By the tenth tap, the slugs turns to the direction of her finger and by the twentieth, they migrate to that sound in a hypnotic daze. It is wonderful and magical and mysterious. It is only just taps, a percussion without a melodic arc, but why do they, too, hear music?

Oh, why should she care! After everything, "It's working!" Garnet screams like one of those girls who get splashed by suntanned surfers on the beaches. It's—. He's crying. "You're crying."

"Huh?" Luminous responds, not knowing what it is he is feeling. He wipes away the tears with his sleeves and explains that his eyes gets watery when he is bored. Yet, it is still going, and his shoulders shake with the kind of sadness that cannot be mere boredom.

Instinctively, Garnet reaches over to embrace him.

"No!" he shoves her. "If I touch you, I would never want to go back."

"Go back where?"

But she will never get an answer as Luminous hurries off and away, back to the world where Evan still needs him.

...

"He's been in there for three days! I'm going in!"

Phantom rushes up the steps, straight for the portal that Aran is guarding, at a speed and with a skill that Aran would not be able to intercept until it is too late. As soon as Phantom passes her, Luminous emerges from the other side and squats on the ground. The portal to the past shuts, leaving two dust-stained, broken pillars in the middle of the desolate, and destroyed Temple of Time. For eons, grass did not grow on these lands but after the white stones had been blown away by battle, they started growing at a rate untouched by people. The time is twilight.

"Lumi, hey, talk to me," Phantom softly says, touching Luminous's shoulder.

"Move aside," Aran says, pushing Phantom away. "It's times like these when you have to hug it out with your friends." She puts Luminous around her, and to her surprise, it is rather tough and uncomfortable to hug a squatting person. "There we go—whoa!" They fall to their sides, into a resting position, and face one another. Aran sinks her chin into her neck, giving herself a double chin, and makes a funny, bloated face with her open mouth.

And for the first time in forever, Luminous laughs. It is so hearty and honest that Phantom feels a little jealous for not being the one to elicit it.

"Hey, don't look at me like that," Aran says, glancing up. "It's your turn to comfort him. I'm going to grab my equipment."

"What equipment?"

"Sound reconstruction technology. It's some high-tech stuff that you wouldn't understand even if I explained it. But it can recreate any kind of sound that you have heard before."

* * *

They finally moved Luminous's bed out of the hospital room. She didn't think she would mind it so much. Aha, how funny it is that people are at the worst when it comes to predicting their futures? Or maybe she has been lying to herself the whole time about what she truly thinks about Garnet's passing. Without Luminous to direct and weather away that pain, it has come swinging at her fully and with a vengeance.

"Goulas, hello?" Grendel says through the earphones in a soft-grandpa kind of voice. He yawns deeply, the way old people does, and the way she does when her body is too weak to stay awake.

"You should sleep," she says, blinking again and again to keep herself alert. It is not working and the screen on her computer appears to dim with each blink.

"No, no, no. I have nothing to do anymore these days except...to...spent...zzz...gnorg...wew...zzz...gnorg...wew..."

"Goodnight pappy."

If she could, she would keep talking for eons, even if the talk is silence while they are doing their own things. Anything is preferable to sleep.

Anything but because it hurts the most when it is dark, and there is nothing else to do but let the wishes of her mind turn to sleepless things.

The hardest thing about losing Garnet is not the love and affection that she always pour onto her closest people and things. The hardest thing is having to readjust her life without her. Things like finally having to learn to drive because Garnet will never pick her up from work any more. Like baking pancakes on Sundays for one rather than two. Like being stood-up on a Saturday night and having no one to spend your extra movie ticket with. Silly things like that.

"Rhinne. Why...? Why do you suck so much?" Goulas cries, suddenly finding the energy to avoid that tragic sleep. She is sick, so she should be tired. But she guesses that her body finds other things to be more important.

She tosses out blood on her pillow.

Those pathetic doctors cannot even determine the most likely prognosis other than 'she will probably die eventually'. Would the crystals above her head even work? How would they wash her body? Oh, forget it. She is too tired, weak, sad, unwilling, and unable to reach for the crystals above her. Death grips her by the neck and shakes the seizures into her.

_Maybe if I had not saved him, I could live with that regret instead._

Right as the light dims into completion, an opening from the darkness comes for her in the form of white.

_Phantom, get her on the bed, now! There's no time! Hang in there, Goulas! This is a command, you hear me! We'll save you!_

* * *

_The rhythm of Ellinia plays.  
_

_"It's a miracle. The influence is moving to one place."_

_He touches her with the light coming from his only hand._

_"Keep going, doctor! We have to save her!"_

_The rhythm of Ellinia plays.  
_

_Goulas hears only Cygnus's Garden._

* * *

The prison's door creaks open, and they take her, a simple mother of three and a convicted murderer, to a white-walled, private room. The man who called for the visit is Luminous the Light Mage, Luminous the hero who returned to Victoria Island carrying the Black Mage's last curse.

"Mrs. Yunevych, I am Luminous," he says.

"Yes, yes, I know who you are." She sees that he has lost an arm since the last time she has seen him. Should she question it or would that be rude? Mrs. Yunevych could never imagine being so uncomfortable around an amputee. It reminds her, maybe, of collateral damages.

"You must be wondering why I am here. I came to ask you about Garnet's last words."

"Why are you asking me something like that? There were dozens of people there. Ask any one of them."

"I would but you're the only person I can find who was there. Believe me. I would not want to bother you if I could find someone else."

"Alright then," she grumbles. "I can tell you. But if I do, you have to do something for me. Oh, don't look at me like that. It's not like I'm asking you to break me out of prison. My daughter is applying to New Leaf University once the school year ends. It'd be great if you can pen a recommendation for her."

"Sure. Yes, I can do that."

"Great. Alright, just give me a sec to remember what she had said. I think she said, 'He is not selfish. He does everything because it is for his friends and family.' Hmm, no that is not exactly it. It's on the tip of my tongue. I know for sure she was talking about you though."

He takes a while to let the thought sink in. "Truth is," he starts slowly, swallows a bit, and feels a need to leave. But not now. "I came here on behalf of a friend of mines. But now I want to ask something that she told me she didn't want to know."

"Then don't ask. This isn't rocket science," she comments. Luminous is not one hundred percent sure why but he asks anyways. Mrs. Yunewych sighs. Is she prepared to answer at all? She is neither sad nor happy, just confused. "You know, not the police or even my lawyer would ask me that. It was like my motive didn't matter at all when it happened so plain as day. The truth is. The truth is I don't know why I shot her."

It takes a while for Luminous to hear the words long after she said them. "You don't know? Didn't you do it because you wanted to protect your kids?"

"That's what everyone wants to think. When I think back to that moment outside the hospital, I don't remember thinking about my kids at all. Before and after, yes. But during. No. I stopped thinking the moment I saw the red in her eyes. At that point, I felt like I had no choice."

"But you did have a choice. If you hadn't done that, she could have been saved."

"I suppose. Yes, I." She covers her mouth. "I really wish. I really wish—! Oh! I don't know! I wish I do, but I just don't know. I—! Ah!"

"Mrs. Yunevych. Mrs. Yunevych." He tries to comfort her without touching her but he doesn't know how. "I too don't—."

"Hey!" screams the prison guard. "What did you say to her? Visit is over!"

"No, wait!" Luminous tries to explain and in return the guard shouts,

"Get out!"

He has no choice but to leave.

* * *

It is the break of November and nothing is more delicate than the first speck of hail at the break of November.

"Umbrella?" Phantom runs out of the taxi and joins Luminous who watches the apartment on the other curb from under the light of the street lamp. "It sounds like drumming," he remarks, looking at the shadows of icy rocks over his open umbrella. The street and buildings are just as regular as anywhere else in New Leaf City, but the arrangement of everything, buildings, fences, cars, are so squeezed, they appear minuscule in comparison to each other. Luminous finds this to be a kind of rural claustrophobia, but many others would feel the coziness within.

Phantom sends out a gloved hands when Luminous blows into the open skin of his only hand. "But I'm not one of your pretty girls," Luminous protests.

"I don't mind. You're my best friend and these are the mittens you gave me last Christmas, remember?" Deciding to channel the Phantom-side of him, Luminous takes off that mitten and wears it instead. Then it is Luminous's turn to keep Phantom warm. "And not every pretty girl comes my way can hold my hand."

"Lucky me." Luminous tries to be sarcastic but with the stuttering cold, it comes out sounding grateful instead.

Finally the apartment across the street starts giggling. It is Goulas's voice and hugging her from behind is Dr. Muller. Once they clear the outdoor roof of the apartment, Goulas screams at the touch of hail on her forehead and playfully shoves Dr. Muller away. They look very happy to be with one another.

After Dr. Muller opens his coat and brings it over their heads, Goulas spies Luminous and Phantom under the lamplight and immediately knows they are there for her. Dr. Muller goes off on his own to the car while Goulas walks across the car-filled yet lifeless street with his coat still over her.

"Don't tell me you just stood there until I walked down. I did give you my number along with my address," she says, more friendly than she ever had with him.

"I just got here," Luminous lies.

"You know what. You're the only person I would have no qualms calling a stinking liar. But I'm glad they finally dropped the charges."

"They didn't actually. I'm still in trouble for kidnapping you and saving your life with the procedure I banned. But they decided to deport me to somewhere tropical instead of sending me to jail. I'm heading out tomorrow."

"Oh." She sounds disappointed. "So this is goodbye then."

"Actually, it's an opportunity. One of my friends, she's pretty big in the government and she can get me into Edelstein even with the current situation. I'm short on hand, though, of good people, and I think you have what it takes. Here's her number."

"No thanks." She puts out a hand.

"Do you need time to think it over?"

"No, Luminous. I literally don't want to. I know how bad it is. I hate it, but I am not cut from the same cloth as you and Garnet. You are the idealist. I'm just some girl who reads complicated books and magazines now and then."

This is usually the time when Luminous would point out her hypocrisy and weakness, yet being compared with Garnet has made him appreciate the differences between what he and other people could and could not do.

Goulas is in the middle of the street and just about to say her last goodbye when she turns around and says instead, "You know what. Text me the number in case I change my mind. And if I don't. One! Two! Three! Luminosity Scouts together!"

* * *

**A/N:** Two notes. 1) Luminosity Scouts is obviously based on the Girl Scouts whose one of their logos is, you guessed it, a rainbow daisy. 2) I wrote this over the course of three months. Parts of my writing style was influenced by a graphic novel I was reading. Cookies for those who can guess what it is!

**Fanfic Challenge**

**What is it?**

It's a way to get writers inspired. It helps writers with writer's block. It gives a challenge for writers of any level. Basically, I give you something that inspires you and you write whatever you want based on that something. You could write a poem, a short story, the first chapter to a long story, or even a play (cleverly disguised as a story, ofc, because ffnet hates plays). Basically, go crazy! It's all about being creative as possible based on the inspiration of the challenge.

**Do I win anything if I take the challenge?**

Oh well...um. Let's see. Shoot, looks like I have just enough mesos for rent this month! Erm, you will be forever immortalized on my profile? I mean what more can you ever ask for! Yes, if you write something, I will put your name and story on my profile, regardless if I think it's good or not.

**Is there a time or word limit?**

I mean, if you take three years, you might want to give me a PM so that I can add you to my profile. No word limit either.

**Ok, gotcha. Now give me the challenge!**

_Challenge:_ Write a story, poem, w/e you want except the first _OR_ last line (or both) has to contain this phrase: 'And this is why they love one another.'

**Final note:** Even though this is a challenge, no pressure. If you're stuck on something, you can always give me a PM and I can give you a couple of tips, pointers, feedback. The important thing it to have fun and be inspired!


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